I recently read an interesting paper about how we understand the world. The base tenet was we build mental models of common, everyday things. This familiarity makes us believe we understand how they work. However, when pressed to explain their workings, we are often unable to do so. This is the link to the article.

The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth
Rozenblit & Keil (2002)

I was recently speaking to an employee about how an audio speaker worked as an analogy for RFID. Because speakers are very familiar objects, he believed he understood how it created sound. But when pressed to explain it in detail, he was unable to. Think about this if you are explaining technical concepts, whether it’s onboarding a new hire, walking a customer through how a product works, or handing off a project to another engineer: their familiarity with a topic doesn’t really mean they understand it. Assuming otherwise is where things break down.

This delta between how much we think we understand things and how much we actually understand things shows up all over the place. As I thought about what I read in the paper and summary (below), I came away with some key takeaways:

1. Drawing out how things work manually is critical to validating understanding.
2. At this point we can recognize both what we understand and what we don’t.
3. Move forward on the specific gaps you found.

AI can be a huge help with this. It is easy to ask for and find deep explanations to clarify the problem. You can also draw out your understanding, upload an image of your drawing, and ask where your understanding falls apart. You’re then responsible for absorbing that information and asking probing questions to make it clearer.

This all ties in nicely with my life experience that people learn much better when we can explain things by drawing out their workings on paper or a whiteboard. It also makes me think of the quote from 1 Corinthians 13:12

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

Not everything needs a whiteboard session, but the next time something feels obvious, it’s worth drawing it out to make sure you know how it works. I hope this inspires people to move from just familiarity to more deep understanding.

And for people that don’t want to read the full article, I had this summary made:

Rozenblit and Keil call this the “illusion of explanatory depth” (IOED) — and it’s not general overconfidence. It hits hardest for explanatory knowledge (how things work), much less for facts, procedures, or stories. Across 12 studies, the effect held up consistently: strongest for devices and natural phenomena, weaker for geography facts, and basically absent for narratives and procedures like “how to make coffee.”

The most interesting finding: the best predictor of the illusion wasn’t actual knowledge, but how visibly mechanical something looked. The more visible parts a device had, the more people assumed they understood the hidden internals too — even when they didn’t. Just knowing the names of parts inflated confidence without reflecting real understanding.

The authors argue this isn’t just a flaw — shallow, “good enough” causal models are often all we need day-to-day. If we constantly tested our understanding to full depth, we’d never stop digging.

The post Our Limited Deep Understanding appeared first on DavidCarta.com.

and I feel fine…. – R.E.M.

I’m sure I am not the only person to experience this, but the predictions of the end of “XXXXX” seem to be accelerating. In the last week, I’ve noticed the following things are apparently supposed to collapse any day now:

• Banks in the US due to the weakness in the bond markets
• Currency in the US due deficits and debasement
• Jobs for everyone due to advances in AI
• National US  respect due to Trump aggressiveness (or Biden incompetence previously)
• California economy due to flight of population and millionaires

I get it. Hyperbole and doomsday headlines drive clicks and views. And bad dramatic things can and do happen. I’m sure Michael Burry’s prediction of the AI collapse has lots of people worried based on his predicting the 2008 real estate collapse.

Everyone gets there own personal “the sky is falling” messages from their own news bubbles. Just today, I was informed:

• “Writing code by hand is dead”
• “The SAAS meltdown has begun”

If I listened to these, I would just close my company now and give up. But I have a hard time living with a cloud of doom over my head. So both personally and professionally, I have decide on a balance. My choice is to be very optimistic about the future and possibilities. At the same time, I prepare my family, my business, and affairs for eventualities.

This isn’t living with my head in the sand, ignoring changes in the world. Making concrete plans for unexpected setbacks and putting them into effect takes real time and effort. Insurance, support structures, rainy day funds, friend/professional networks, food/inventory backups, and preparations with God all need to be attended to. But having these in place, allows me to live day to day in a “happy bubble.”

And I think that’s a great way to live.

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This seemed like something that would be found in a business book except that they make a terrible acronym. But I thought the ideas were still valuable enough to share. The four adjectives below encapsulate my theme for business operations in 2026.

Agency: This is the who that will be responsible for getting something done. We had a bad habit of assigning items to teams, not people. Having agency make people feel more personally responsible for getting stuff done.

Urgency: It is important for the team to know when a task should be expected to be completed. Too often we would say we wanted something done, but didn’t say when. Without an expected due date, it was easy to cycle on the final part of the project instead of buttoning things up quickly.

Accountability: If you want to achieve a goal – reading the bible daily, being able to run a marathon, writing a book, or beat an addiction – having an accountability partner will help. Its shining a light on your actions and we all want to look good when examined. To do this at Telaeris, we have decided to make both the who and the when visible for tasks and goals we want to achieve. This allows us to be accountable to our peers, clients, and partners, but for our purposes this is mostly so we can shine brightly as we share our accomplishments with our co-workers.

Priority: At my company, and I’m sure at others’, there are always pulls away from what people “should” be working on. People trying to do the right things, but end up on tangents that are not the most important. Just this morning, I saw a little bug and said to myself “that should only take 30 minutes to fix”. Those thirty minutes easily turn into a few hour distraction as I fall down another rabbit hole. Staying on task and having an ordered, priority list helps employees get the stuff done that should be done first.

I’ve found focusing on these to be a great value. I hope the ideas can inspire other people to improve their business operations.

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Just for fun, I decided that I would make some predictions for the upcoming year. Let me get to it in no particular order, and with no particular agenda.

Artificial Intelligence

With so much news and activity swirling around AI, this is really hard to predict where we are going, especially given the huge changes that have come in 2025. I’m going to make my prediction here that I think is a safe bet, yet I think will be a big deal when it happens – specifically Personalized AI memory. Right now, while we can create and ask for personas to answer specific questions, the place I think AI will make the biggest jumps in improvement will be in having a continued context for every person – basically a memory.

A large part of a person’s value comes from their historical knowledge and experience, creativity in thinking about solutions, and being able to apply these together. AI has the advantage of crowd-sourcing knowledge and solutions, but without a person’s contextual history. The result is that delivered value AI provides is much lower than it could be. Having access to memory in terms of information available from e-mails, documents, chats and meetings transcripts of will make the AI much more useful.

In my estimation, big winners in this space will be whichever companies can leverage this information. Whoever is able to enable secure, contextual memory for individuals, will have a great start at making what could be a great AI digital helper/assistant.

From a first look, I would guess Google/Gemini and Microsoft/OpenAI have the infrastructure to be first movers in this space. But historically they have been slow to move and build. And honestly, with APIs and MCPs being broadly available, the door is really open for a first mover in this space.

Art/Music

In 2026, I expect there to be a top 10 pop music hit. I imagine that the voice, lyrics, music and arrangement will be created with AI. As soon as this happens, there will be a lawsuit claiming that something was stolen from a real life artist.

In the art world, I expect there to be a large public art exhibit of digital AI art. This will be broadly decried by creative artists.

Backlash against AI

Following on the controversy that Art and Music will see, 2026 will start a backlash against AI as people get fed up with AI Slop. Some businesses will advertise “real people” as a competitive advantage over companies that rely on AI. This backlash will be broad, but small across industries. I expect this to grow significantly in the future.

Energy

While “Big Oil” will continue to be back with Trump in charge, the huge change in the energy market will be nuclear. Energy is being required at greater levels for AI capable data centers. Using “green” sources like dams, solar, wind, and geothermal have both significant environmental impacts and are limited. This demand will fuel investment in nuclear energy. My guess is that the current administration will facilitate building and permits, understanding that plants need to be close to completion before the 2028 election and a potentially combative administration.

If I had to make a crazy, out-there guess, I think Elon Musk will start a company to deliver compact nuclear power plants. This aligns with and amplifies his other businesses – energy for cars, power grid, robots, and AI.

Stock Market

People will continue for the rest of 2026 to declare that an AI bubble is going to burst. I don’t expect there to be a major correction until 4-8 months after both OpenAI and Anth2opic actually have their IPOs, which I imagine to be next year.

Medicine

Right to Try will be broadly extended Trump with encouragement by RFK Jr., especially as new procedures to fight cancer are created faster than the FDA can test and approve them. More resistance will be seen from people vaccinating their kids.

Technology

AI-enabling glasses will be the new fad, selling a few million, but will not explode as companies want it to. Long term traction will be restricted by needing a phone for the AI content as well as problems with people losing or breaking their expensive AI glasses. I see a great home for AI glasses in manufacturing and quality control. My bet is that cell enabled watches will become even ubiquitous with expanded AI capabilities.

Facial recognition will start to be demonized in the USA, as it is discovered that more and more criminals are found using open camera infrastructure. Privacy online and in person will become a much bigger deal. Maps and email snooping enabled people’s activities and were seen as helpful. I think people will reject pervasive incursions into their lives such as ad targeting and government/big pharma tracking.

Apple will release a Mac tablet + keyboard that can switch operation modes between iOS and MacOS.

Windows 12/AI will be released and people will hate it being overbearing.

International Politics

More of the world will see populist candidates winning, moving away from candidates supporting UN policies. I expect that Europe and other first world countries will restrict easy immigration from third world countries, except for those with money or high potential.

Physical Access Control

Since this is my business area, I thought I should make a suggestion to where I see the industry moving.  The major driver I see happening in the industry will be a accelerated migration from badge only access control systems, to ones enabling cell phones and watch based mobile credentials along with badges. Many of these will include a second authentication factor using the phone.

The post 2026 Predictions for Fun appeared first on DavidCarta.com.

For years, one of my superpowers was to quickly filter through Google results to find specific information. I was usually trying to dig into the technical details of a subject.  To do this, my strategy was the following:

1. Search for the keyword(s)
2. CTRL-Click on the 20 or so most promising links
3. Quickly skim each tab
4. Curate the top 5 articles – down to 3-5 pages
5. Digest and assimilate the details to achieve the solution.

This approach of identify, research, clarify, curate, and solve proved to be very powerful as it allowed me to search many articles quickly. I could regularly find information or answers that would elude colleagues or employees.

My technique was reminiscent of one shared with me while studying for my doctorate in the early 1990s at UC San Diego.  Dr. Alan Sussman, my professor in mathematic optimization explained a key to his success while completing his PhD. He recognized he was not intellectually at the top of his class nor did he have the best scientific intuition. But he did have a skill that set him apart from his peers. He was great at identifying parallel problems in both the literature and using Gopher. He would then apply the math that other’s had already solved to allow him to make progress on his research. Identify, research, clarify curate, and solve.

With the advent of ChatGPT and other AI tools, over the course of 2024, I found the engines capable of finding the information I was looking for faster than my old approach. Seeing a better approach, I slowly started to pivot. My techniques also started to change:

1. Ask the high level question
2. Clarify the question, based on the AI engine answer.
3. Dig deeper with consecutive queries until you uncover the result.

I remembered my thought back in November of 2024 that the future superpower for people trying to find information will no longer be filtering information out of Google. Rather the key will be how well people can ask clarifying questions to the AI to solve the questions that it has gleaned from its training data.

Now, a little more than a year after I first noticed my new default, I’m seeing this 5 step approach to answering questions continuing to be important. But in today’s AI game, there will be other pieces that will also need to be thought about – markdown, memory, and context. But I’ll leave those for another article.

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We have been hiring a lot of contractors from UpWork in the past few months trying to find the right person to accelerate work on an existing project. We have hired and released 6 of 8 contractors over this time as we searched to find the right fit. And I’m still only certain of one of the two contractors will work for us in the long terms. Here are a couple lessons I have learned:

1. Hiring is hard. Even when people look great from the outset, it really takes working with them to see if they are a fit or not. Previous project success does not guarantee success for your project.
2. Reviews and ratings on UpWork are lies. If you see a number of nothing-burger comments on a person’s resume, it is probably because they are weak.
3. It hurts to give contractors poor reviews so many hiring companies don’t. You know that contractors live and die from their reviews. Poor reviews will result in no work for a contractor. As a compassionate human being, no one wants to hurt a contractor, even if they were not successful for you.  Also, contractors on UpWork will beg to have you improve to their scores.
4. Contractors cheat on their hours. Always check the work log and hours – sometimes it is innocent and sometime deliberate. If a contractor says they want to use manual time, run away.
5. Use fixed-price jobs. Following up on the item above, it is impossible to cheat on a deliverable. Good people can get a lot done fast and you can control how much you want to spend on a job.
6. Most developers suck at testing their code. I can’t count how many times I only need to spend a minute or two testing a solution only to find it failing basic use cases.  If a PR needs to be revisited more than 2x, it is time to get a new contractor.
7. If you find a good contractor, keep them.  Once you unearth a gem, treasure them, treat them right and pay them well.

As a note to UpWork contractors – you are less likely to get fired for spending 100% extra time working on your code to get it right, but you may get fired for having to revisit the same code 3-4 times, even it it only adds up to that same 100% extra time. If you are wasting the time and effort of the person who hired you, it is no longer cost effective to outsource to you.

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Father Jim was a priest of immense love, humor, and gentleness. My wife and I met him while presenting on an Engaged Encounter retreat. I saw firsthand how he connected with couples to be married by cracking jokes with deadpan humor, followed by a wry grin. We connected over a shared interest in basketball, our love of service to engaged couples, and our interest in hearing each other’s stories and bad jokes.

I have this image of Jim’s arrival to the Pearly Gates:

St. Peter, are there any chiropractors here in Heaven?  I left mine back on earth, but he had recently quit. He said he was tired of all the “back” talk.

I recall Father Jim talking about serving the seafarers and one story in particular about a large shipping vessel with an entirely Muslim crew with the exception of a single Catholic. He related how difficult it was for that crewman to receive mass. It was reminiscent of Jesus’ story of the shepherd going to find the one lost sheep. That was Jim in a nutshell – always willing to serve, knowing an impact of one is still worthwhile.

The Spanish and English communities of Catholic Engaged Encounter, Marriage Encounter, and Retrouvaille, will all miss his service, dedication, and love.

The post Moving on Up appeared first on DavidCarta.com.

 

“someone who starts their own business, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity”

• 20% within the first year
• 50% in 5 years
• 65% in 10 years

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I’ve written before about the benefits of unplugging. However, like many other people I’m much better at giving advice like this than executing on it.

I brought my phone with us on our recent backpacking trip because it is currently the best camera that I own. It also provides the added benefits of live trail updates via All Trails and its integrated GPS and the emergency flashlight. Whereas before, I would bring my Canon Digital Elf camera, paper topo maps, and my phone would remain in my car.

I had turned off mobile data, thinking this would maximize my battery usage during the trip. But while setting up camp beyond Yosemite Falls, my phone binged with an SMS message. Guess I should have put it in airplane mode! We were surprised to find that for much of our hike north of Yosemite Valley and south of Tioga Road, we had phone reception and even 4G/5G data.

It used to be when out backpacking, you were disconnected by default. Disciplined unplugging is now required – even when out exploring God’s great earth.

If you are interested in the actual hike we took in Yosemite, I have published it on AllTrails.

The post Unplugging appeared first on DavidCarta.com.

For me to be able to do all of this alone, work to provide for my family, and have any sort of personal life would be near impossible. Something would have to give. Would it be the bedtime reading to my youngest two? The walk I took with my oldest to discuss something in his life? Or talking with my second oldest while working out a knot in his lower back? My choice was to give up my personal exercise time, which is likely not healthy in the long run.

It made me reflect on the importance of choosing wisely in your life-partner.  My wife and I present retreats for Catholic Engaged Encounter, with the hope that we are able to help couples make sure they want to build a sacramental marriage together as well as giving them tools which can help them navigate their married life together. But after this week, it made the importance of what we do even more poignant.

If we are able to help couples stay more happily married, it improves lives far beyond the husband and the wife. Children can learn to love to read/cook/study/(fill in your favorite activity here!) better as parents have time model the behaviors. Connections between parents and children are stronger. The parents work is done better for their employers. Schools and teachers will likely have better results as kids are better supported at home. The list goes on and reverberates down generations.

My message to my children when it is time for them date and eventually think about marriage is to choose wisely.

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