Summary of the Connections:

Real Cat-Concept Cat
ATTENUATION
This has been covered in the discussion above. Information flowing from reality is severely attenuated as it takes shape in our mental models. The methodology used for determining what to throw away and what to keep is addressed in the 'Spoze model.

AMPLIFICATION
This is usually an unconscious act. Our concept of cat, for example, probably includes only a few basic features--the ones most everyone can draw--the triangular ears, curve of the mouth, the oval pupils. We don't need to "download" all information about all cats in the universe to build a good enough mental model that lets us distinguish cats from other kinds of animals. In order to learn more about cats, however, we must translate our mental symbology back up to reality by amplification. Here's an example.

Many people don't realize that cats don't walk on their hind feet. Instead, they walk on their toes. What we think is the cat's leg extending below it's body is mostly foot, ankle and lower leg. The upper leg is hidden in the mass of the animal's body. In order to correct this deficiency of understanding, most people must consciously amplify the simple stick leg they are used to drawing to represent the cat's back leg and begin to compare it with what's really going on in the cat's anatomy. Instead, many inexperienced artists get caught drawing and redrawing the same mistakes because they are unaware of the mismatch between their concept and the reality. Even looking at the real cat doesn't seem to help. Their concept must be revealed or made plain and amplified in the mind of the student before the mistake can be realized and corrected.

Concept Cat-Mechanical Cat
ATTENUATION
Despite the limited scope of our concepts, they are vastly more complex than the models we can make from them. No matter how hard we try, no tangible model that we make ever exhibits all of the features that we can imagine incorporating. At some point we have to stop. Knowing what to leave in and what to throw out is most of the game.

AMPLIFICATION
Our models nearly always require explanation. We find ourselves constantly reminding ourselves that "the number in this cell corresponds to this feature". Documentation and technical journals are created to correct this problem, but really the only answer for it is collaboration among designers.

Mechanical Cat-Real Cat
ATTENUATION
The purpose of building a model is not to replicate reality. We've already seen that the laws of successive attenuation in the model prohibit such a purpose from succeeding. Therefore, it is useless to require such impossible fidelity. The characteristics and infinite detail of the Real Cat are captured only in aggregate by the model. Nevertheless, it is possible for the model to prove its fidelity with Real Cat behavior at this aggregate level. For example, we might expect a painting to present us with the essence of a real cat, but not the behavior of the cat over time. The artist chose a static medium to prove her concept. There' s no point in asking why it doesn't show the cat in the process of running. Likewise, business models will be based upon a great many assumptions of the aggregate behavior of components of the real business, or, in the case of agent-based emergent systems simulations, on assumptions for the rules of behavior of individual agents in the enterprise.

AMPLIFICATION
This was discussed in the text above. Because our models are comprised of so much less information than was contained in either the Real Cat or the Concept Cat, some portions of the model will probably have to be translated, and portions of the reality will be missing entirely. These omissions often require explanations.

The Uses and Abuses of Two-Catting:
The model works great when it's employed with attention, craft and discipline. There are some practices that must be watched for and employed with care: they have the potential for both great value and danger. These occur most often when one of the cats is removed from the iterative process. Because there are three cats in the model, there are three possible combinations of two-catting. I'll look at them in turn.

Real Cat-Concept Cat
GREATEST VALUE
Often we need to learn the art of observation. In business it may take the form of "management by walking around." Sometimes our lack of skill in building mechanical models hampers our ability to translate features from the Real Cat down into our concept. In these cases, some focused interaction between only your mental concept of something and the object itself can help establish a good mental model. This is also a way to develop "gut feelings" that can tend to pan out well in certain circumstances.

GREATEST DANGER
This kind of two-catting allows all sorts of unsubstantiated assumptions and errors to accumulate. A non-geologist can look at an outcrop of rock and develop some mental model about how it got to be the way it is, but the concept will likely be based on incorrect assumptions. Since the observer is under no obligation to prove the model by putting the assumptions on paper and then testing them against a different outcrop, there's little chance of ever being set straight.

Concept Cat-Mechanical Cat
GREATEST VALUE
Sometimes it's good to just do a core dump and tweak a model. Sometimes it's too expensive to return to the "real cat" over and over again to improve the concept, and data must be collected in the initial stages, brought back from the field, and worked into a model in isolation of the thing being modeled. [Note that if the data is collected physically, then that represents building a mechanical cat.] This is also a great tool for building a working model of your assumptions. Such a model can be used diagnostically to discover any holes, inconsistencies or errors in your concept.

GREATEST DANGER
Without any reference to reality, it's easy to build up a sort of nonsense, fantasy world. In extreme cases, it's possible to believe that the Concept Cat IS the Real Cat. We all suffer this at one time or another, and it plagues civilization in general. Stereotypes, prejudices, a sense of personal limitation, and fear all result from this closed loop behavior between what we think the world is like and our documentation of these personal beliefs. Pseudoscience falls in this category of two-catting.

Mechanical Cat-Real Cat
GREATEST VALUE
Once we believe something about reality--once we have a firmly established concept or mental model--it can be very hard to uproot and change. Eliminating Concept Cat from the equation can be useful in these circumstances. But it's difficult. One technique is suspending judgment when testing a model with reality--especially a priori judgment.

GREATEST DANGER
Without engaging Concept Cat, we don't learn. Many of us have had jobs that required only a mindless comparison of figures on reports (Mechanical Cat) to items in an inventory (Real Cat). No thinking involved. No growth potential.

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