CART HORSE CARROT

December 14th, 2019

There’s that expression about putting the cart before the horse.  It’s to point out that we’ve got things in the wrong order.  Starting with the end instead of the beginning.

Another way to think about it is with incentives.  An incentive is a fancy word for reward.  When it comes to getting our stubborn pleasure-seeking selves to get something done, we can use incentives to make sure it happens.  But in which order?

Does it make much sense to have the reward before we’ve done any work?

I’ll just watch one episode before I do my work.

This is putting the cart before the horse.  Instead of relaxing, the relaxing can be used as an incentive to get the work done.  It’s far less effective the other way.  And in fact, the time spent relaxing isn’t as good as it could be because there is a pall of impending work hanging over the situation.  But reverse the order and the time spent relaxing is that much more enjoyable because work is out of the way. 

This is a surprisingly simple and difficult thing for humans to do.  We are too short term.  We want things now. 

And for the most part this is how much of the animal kingdom works.  But one crucial thing that separates us from all other animals is our ability to plan.  How many animals have goals that they project one month, or one year, or even five and ten years out into the future?  Do you see any lizards preparing for retirement? 

LISTENING FOR INTENT

December 13th, 2019

This episode is dedicated to Bret Weinstein who is an evolutionary biologist and creator of the Dark Horse Podcast.  You can connect with him on Twitter @BretWeinstein

Bret Weinstein is credited with creating and popularizing the phrase Bad faith changes everything.

It sounds great and for those who know what he’s talking about it makes a lot of sense.  The best example to help elicit just what he’s talking about is the ‘gotchya interview’.

This is where an interviewer is looking to trap someone in their own words and either make a fool of this person by entangle them in their own story in a way that makes that person look guilty, usually through contradiction and hypocrisy.  Accomplishing this malicious task is not difficult, it’s akin to gaslighting and it merely requires the ability to be more agile with one’s use of language.  Unfortunately, language is not equipped with a framework that is airtight in the way that mathematics appears to be when compared together.

Such an interviewer who is looking to undermine their companion in dialogue is said to be in bad faith, as Bret would say. 

The phrase in bad faith, however, does not communicate all of this.  The phrase requires a fair amount of context, as the word faith is a fairly complicated one given it’s religious overtones.

To have good faith in conversation is to attempt the opposite of the ‘gotchya’ style interview.  When someone engages with good faith, they do so with the assumption that communication will not be perfect, that things will be misunderstood, and because of this our companion in dialogue needs a lot of leeway to negotiate all the vagaries of language and communication. 

At core, what is the aim of such a person?  One who seeks to converse in good faith?  What is such a person looking for?

The answer is simple.  Many of our mistakes are forgiven on the basis of this answer: 

it intention.

Intention counts for a lot in communication and human relations.  Or at least, it should.

There is a world of difference between situations where we’ve been hurt by a friend and it wasn’t intended, and an identical circumstance where the hurt was intended.  The intention not only clarifies the past and explains what’s gone wrong, but it goes beyond this and describes something important about the future behavior of such a friend. 

A person who converses in good faith is searching for the meaning that a person intends to communicate.  In some sense this means taking everything with a grain of salt because what’s said most likely does not honor the intention behind the message because of inevitable problems with language and communication.  But further, it means that we must give our companion in dialogue a chance to clarify their message so that it achieves higher fidelity to their intention, and we can aid in this process by asking thoughtful questions.

To converse in good faith is to listen for a person’s intention, and actively search for it.  This is how dialogue can be so powerful.  What a person says is often just a blurry view of what they have in mind.  The right question can become an aid like cloth to a lens covered in oil.  Each question and answer sharpens the view, allowing intention to emerge.

VICARIOUS ADVICE

December 12th, 2019

Is there any experience so ripe for inflating the ego than when someone asks for your advice about what they should do with their life?

It’s flattering.  Someone views what you are doing and sees something in the process so admirable that they’d like to steer their own life with some of that influence. 

So how does a person approach the difficult answer to this request?  Perhaps some don’t find it difficult at all, but are all too willing to rattle off their own brand of wisdom.  However, doing such is often accomplished by editing the narrative of one’s own life. 

We are all plagued by the “mistakes” that we have made over the years and far too much time is spent wondering what could have been if only we’d had the wisdom we have now to make a better choice.  This, unfortunately, is terrible logic.  As clear as the past might look, hindsight has about as much resolution as our plans for the future.  That is, we can sure imagine it clearly, but how much they accord to reality is an entirely different story.  A different decision in the past would have lead to a completely different future, and just like the future ahead of us at every point, it too would be full of uncertainty and invisible variables that would throw our plans.

And yet when asked for advice from another, we instruct in a way so as to avoid the mistakes we’ve made.  This is a selfishness.  It’s as though we’ve taken the balloon of our own ego from the person who started inflating it with an ask for advice and continued the work of pumping that ego up.

Certainly there is some standard practical advice that is good to hand out, particularly the advice that is not taught in schools, like finances, the importance of exercise, and perhaps even a word or two about meditation. 

But otherwise what is a person to do?  There can’t be a standard formula for a good life because they are categorically different.

If anything, what a person is looking for is information about how to hone their own tools for navigation. 

Do we make decisions out of fear and security, or do we make them out of curiosity and adventure?

The gulf between these two possibilities is based solely on how a person’s internal compass is calibrated.  And bizarrely, both perspectives can have the same fuel – that is: how precious life is.  We can fear losing it and the fact that it ends and seek to protect it.  But in recognizing such preciousness, we can also honor it by living to the fullest.  It’s as though both perspectives are looking from the same place, but it’s an optical illusion, and upon first glance some people see the later, and some the other.

Helping a person confront this duality in their own values may be the most useful thing we can do when asked for general advice.  But this is not necessarily something that we can simply tell someone.  It’s something we must try to evoke, with questions, in order to create a thoughtful space where options can be explored and rearranged.

We may find that the best advice is to simply lead by example, and in this case, we can only grow more effective by being curious about the person asking.  In so doing, we might just pass on some of that curiosity.

This episode references Episode 57: Compass and Tinkered Thinking’s all time most popular Episode, number 6: What’s Your Passion?

HALO OF IGNORANCE

December 11th, 2019

The Dunning-Krugger effect is a phenomenon described in psychology.  It’s when a person grossly overestimates their ability to do something.  We’ve all seen this in some form or another.  Perhaps with a children’s recital where it’s quite understandable and potentially adorable, but also with adults.  Chances are, most of us have also been guilty of this delusion at some point.  Reality eventually comes knocking and we get a cold hard slap in the face, suddenly we realize we aren’t so talented or skilled.

This phenomenon exists on a sort of coin though, or perhaps a spectrum.  There is a symmetrical experience which is perhaps even more pervasive.  It’s when you are so aware of your inability that you become paralyzed, and you don’t even make any effort whatsoever.  The logic is: what’s the point?  It’s not going to result in anything good because I can’t do it.  At most I’ll just embarrass myself for trying.  As opposed to the Dunning-Kruger which encapsulates an obliviousness to one’s situation, this other experience is the result of being hyper aware of the possibility of falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

This second experience might seem like a safe bet.  And in the short term it is.  Comparatively, there’s no risk of embarrassment at all.  But in the long term, this switches.  Playing it safe in the long term in this way might end up being a total waste of the precious gift of time and life.  Nothing could possibly be worse.

Risking embarrassment is a pretty tepid cost for ensuring that one’s life is not wasted.

The thing about the Dunning-Kruger effect, or rather, someone suffering from it, is that they are far more likely to improve because they are putting something out into the world with their expression of ability (or rather inability) and this creates the opportunity to receive honest feedback.

The person who simply remains paralyzed out from fear of embarrassment has far less opportunity for improvement: 

How are you supposed to get feedback if you do nothing?

It’s because of this asymmetry that most older people will say that they don’t regret what they did, they only regret what they didn’t try to do.  It’s an exercise worth doing.  That is, to politely ask people in the later decades of their life if they regret anything.  It’s amazing how receptive the older generations are to this question, and 99% of them give that same answer.  They wish they’d taken more chances and tried more things.

It’s only by trying something and potentially making a fool of one’s self that we ever develop any abilities whatsoever.  Think of an infant trying to make that black and blue leap into toddler-hood.  It requires standing and wobbling and falling and stumbling and bruised knees and of course the ego takes a lot of humbling blows during this whole process.  But the child slowly learns, and soon enough that kid is scoring goals on ice skates, or flipping skateboards in midair.  Could there be any better example of how we can benefit from the Dunning-Kruger effect than an infant who sees adults who effortlessly walk around, and then stands with the bold assumption that they can do the same, and then that kid falls flat on their face?  The thing with learning how to walk is that the feedback is instantaneous and it’s ruthless.  Gravity is quite honest.

And that’s the key:  Honesty.  The only real reason that the Dunning-Kruger effect can last for any length of time is because a person deluded in such a way is not getting honest feedback from the people they have around.  We fake smile, and clap and say that something was ‘very good’, or perhaps we say euphemistically that it was ‘interesting’, and these less than honest comments create a halo of ignorance around a person.  Echo chambers present a very similar concept, and they are maintained in the same way: the delusion festers without fresh input that challenges what we know.

For anyone seeking to get very good at something, this halo of ignorance is a very important problem and part of the learning process.  Friends who are confident enough to give honest feedback are beyond valuable if for this reason alone.  In essence, such rare people become mirrors for our performance – reflections offering a perspective on our work that is impossible for us to manufacture otherwise, as we are limited to just our one experience.

The lack of such honesty also powers the paralysis of a person who is too fearful to take a chance.  It’s one thing to take a chance and receive honest feedback that is difficult to hear.  It’s even worse to take a chance and remain the fool because no one is willing to give you an honest picture of how you’re doing. 

Both the Dunning-Kruger effect and the corresponding paralysis would disappear if honesty was an ironclad default.  Those suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect would be cured of their delusion quickly, and those who are paralyzed could take heed in the fact that any feedback would be honest, and the chance to improve automatically goes up.

But still, we generate these halos of ignorance.  We do so, presumably, out of a fear of hurting someone’s feelings.  But again, this is short term thinking.  Given enough honest effort, a person will eventually discover the truth about how their efforts are perceived, and then what will that person think when they look back and compare that discovery to the things said by family, friends and coworkers?

As individuals we can pull out two principles: 

be willing to look foolish by taking chances,

and

find people who are honest and nuanced in their perspective.

THE ONLY PROBLEM

December 10th, 2019

No matter what circumstance you find yourself in life, any problem you encounter is a reflection of the only problem.

The problem is the way you think.

Either you have a classical problem in front of you that may actually have a solution, in which case you need to bang your head against it until you see the solution, or rather your mind changes perspective and suddenly you see that solution.

Or,  you just don’t like your situation and then again, such an attitude is indicative of a perspective about your situation.  Ask: is there anyone in the history of humanity that when faced with this situation would be grateful, or unafraid or content?

Chances are quite good.

And even if such a person hasn’t existed, we can begin to simply imagine what that person would be like, and in so doing, we can begin to import that imagined character’s powers into our own mentality.  This imaginative trick might be at the heart of what good actors do.

All problems in life fit into this 2 part framework. 

But for what purpose?  For progress or simply being content?

In this case it’s either and both.  If we come across a problem that might actually have a solution that we can solve in a practical way, then we are looking at a strategy for progress.  We just need to stretch our mind and wrap it around the problem tight enough to get a sense of what a solution would look like.

The second way our thinking can be the problem is when we can’t change the situation.  Like being stuck in the middle of nowhere until the next bus comes along.  In this case our thinking needs changing in order to simply accept the situation and find peace and contentment in the absence of a problem that can be practically solved.

Both circumstances place accountability solely on our own mind.

We must simply first make up our mind to own this accountability.

Any resistance, of course, is a problem in the way you think.