LIMITS OF EMPATHY

May 11th, 2019

No one can see the world like you do.

If a person could do so – to see the world exactly as you do, they would have had to be born in the exact same circumstance that you were, with the same parents and the same genetic coding and then go on to experience everything that you have.  This is, however, impossible, because that position in the universe is already taken.

The same goes for every single other person on the planet.  There is a finite limit to the empathy we can generate because our ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes ultimately hits this impenetrable barrier of non-experience.

We can try to imagine walking in someone else’s shoes, as the phrase goes, and we may even be able to walk that mile in their shoes, but we cannot do so as that person.  During the experience of that mile, no matter how grueling or enjoyable, each person will notice different things based on the sum influence of previous experience.

Recognizing this unbridgeable gulf is a first step to figuring out how to be more human.  Empathy is often touted as some sort of secret sauce with regards to showing one’s humanity, but it’s understanding the limits of this empathy and furthermore, acting accordingly.

The unbridgeable gap of non-experience, if considered seriously can illicit a sense of awe:  that other person you are interacting with is, in some sense living in a unique iteration of this universe.  Whatever information and experience we can toss over this gap through dialogue is somewhat transcendental, but from physical standpoint.

Recognizing the limits of empathy gives rise to the conclusion that another’s perspective is always valid from their point of view – no matter how flawed and dangerous that perspective.  Whereas we might normally see someone as stubborn, if we refresh our vision of such a person with the realization that there was no possible way they could have come to any other point of view, then our efforts to bluntly contradict such a perspective should look humorous if not idiotic.

A generous frame of mind for conversation is the only way of adequately addressing the limits of empathy.

The two single most pertinent signs of generosity within conversation is giving a companion in dialogue the time and the space to explain themselves to their own satisfaction and to then continue the conversation on the terms laid out by that person.

Many conversations take the appearance of two people simply trying to explain themselves.  But conversation breaks down in this way.  Effective conversation is only when one person is actively trying to explore the other person’s perspective through listening and questions regarding what the person says.  These two roles may flip-flop, but the second both people try to inhabit the roll of explaining their perspective, conversation unravels.

Such a case is the most accessible way to experience the limits of empathy.

QUESTION ABOUT THE QUESTION

May 10th, 2019

A surprisingly difficult question to answer is: what is a question?

We encounter them everyday, we form and use them everyday, but when asked to define ‘question’, most people are apt to pause.  For those who do not have a ready definition, the mind seems to break due to a kind of infinite loop.  What is a question? is… itself a question… which is a question about a question which ultimately references all questions, and hence the recursiveness that ensues which can turn this ponderance into a bit of a Zen Koan.

Other questions are fairly easy in comparison.  For example: what is a cat?  Anyone can answer this in countless and easily recognizable ways.  So here we have an initial way of differentiating at least two types of questions:  those to which the answer is readily available, and those questions that make us feel stumped. 

The first point to make is that questions to which we have ready answers are no longer really questions for us.  A child might ask: what is a particle accelerator? and for the child this is a genuine question.  But for anyone who knows what a particle accelerator is, this is merely a request to copy and paste some information.

Note for a quick moment the wording:  A child’s question to which we have the answer is to the person with the answer: a request.

The main root of both of these words is the key to answering that pesky query: what is a question?  The answer lies in lopping off the last three letters of the word question, in order to get the word quest.

Quest, is quaintly defined as a long or arduous search for something. 

Pause for a moment to think about whether this really applies to the child asking about the particle accelerator.  Pause further to reflect on whether or not this definition accurately describes most of the questions we use during the day:

did you take out the trash? 

what time is the meeting?

who is going to be at the party tonight?

These are more requests for information than they are long and arduous searches for something.  Naturally such a reliance on the root quest somewhat betrays the modern definition of the word question.  It is a tenet of this framework, however, that the current modern definitions of words are experiments in variation, like someone trying a new profession to see how they like it.  Words are constantly shifting, morphing and touching new semantic territory, but the history of a word often points to the reason for it’s existence, and this teleological core often casts the modern definition in a fuller context.  The difference is like that of a general who can see the whole battlefield as opposed to the sniper who is so concentrated, she fails to notice the enemy sneaking up from behind.  Narrow definitions that fail to pay tribute to the context created by that word’s history can fail us in the way the sniper is defeated.

To elucidate this point further, we can simply ask a question:

Which kind of question is generally more valuable?

The question to which someone else has a definitive and verifiable answer?

or

The question which no one knows the answer to, but which can be definitively figured out?

A couple real-world examples help clarify this juxtaposition:  Compare these two questions:

Did you take out the trash?

and

Will this business idea make money?

These comparisons seek merely to underscore the difference between a valuable question and a question which is merely a request for information.  While much of the modern world could benefit from increasing the efficiency of such request-questions (an effort to which Google has spearheaded with unparalleled success) it’s the answerable questions that we haven’t figured out that are of greatest potential value.

At this point, we arrive at a working definition of the word ‘question’ and an answer to the pesky query.

 A question can be defined as:

An open-ended concept that creates momentum.

This fits both the unanswered question which requires some sort of long or arduous quest to figure out and the request-question, to which we have the momentum to go find someone with the answer.

Making that definition deeply intuitive can solve motivation problems, free up stagnate progress on a project, and even build bridges between enemies – if only we extrapolate wisely on the open-ended concepts we create and the direction of momentum which they generate.  The next question of greatest utility that can propel us in a useful direction is simply:

Are you asking yourself the right questions?

BASKETS OF FIRE

May 9th, 2019

To have many irons in the fire is to have a lot on the go, projects, jobs, endeavors, explorations, hobbies, interests.

This last one: interests, might seem like the core of such a drive, and certainly it is the most fluid, efficient and natural drive behind such eclectic efforts. Such diversity is often based in a natural curiosity which can be one of the most powerful tools we can foster within ourselves.

This is a virtuous framework because it sets itself up in a way that naturally safeguards against risk and maximizes potential payoff.

To illustrate this aspect of curiosity and having multiple irons in the fire, we can juxtapose it with a similar idiom that functionally seems to say the same thing but actually conveys the exact opposite meaning. We’ve all heard it:

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Why is it good to have more than one iron in the fire, and why don’t we say don’t put all your irons in one fire?

Because the risk of the basket does not carry over to the creative powers of the forge.

We don’t put all our eggs in one basket because if the basket is accidentally dropped, then many, if not all of our eggs will probably break.

Put another way, we might say: don’t put all your hope into this one endeavor, because… frankly, it might not work, and then all that hope will have functioned like expectation, now dashed to pieces, leaving only a mess of disappointment. It can take a while to bounce back from such an event, and this might just be from an emotional standpoint and says nothing of the financial and reputational fallout that might coincide with such unfortunate results. Many people fail to take into account the unknown forces that create unforeseeable randomness which can affect results in ways beyond our control, and such stiff perspectives can quickly place the blame on an individual who has honestly tried their best as opposed to greater influences of chaos that such stiff perspectives unwisely choose to ignore.

The forge for our irons, on the other hand carries no risk of ruining our projects. Metaphorically. this is where projects grow, where we build, where we experiment, iterate and ultimately produce results. As anyone who has tried their hand at multiple projects - even projects as humble as knitting or simple woodwork – such individuals know how everything comes with a learning curve, even those things we have some experience with. The craftsman or artisan puts no huge and final hope in any one project, but uses projects as a way to get better. The attainment and continued exercise of a skill is ultimately driven by the mind’s desire to increase personal agency, to change reality to be as close to the wonders we dream up.

This iterative practice is the symmetrical antithesis of being too emotionally tied to one single plan. Each iteration in the practice of some given skill, each project is a small plan, one through which we learn from the results and from which we form new plans based on the discoveries of such experimentation.

The blacksmith with several irons in the fire is running multiple experiments at once: keeping this iron in a little longer to see what effect it has, taking another one out sooner to observe that effect, having all of them run at slightly different temperatures to again note the difference of results. If one turns out particularly good, it’s a pleasant surprise, but it’s also knowledgably founded on the experience of what happened with all the other slightly different iterations.

The equivalent mistake of having all eggs in one basket for the blacksmith would be to have only one iron in the fire and to expect it to turn out perfectly.

Concurrently, the equivalent for carrying eggs would be to have a basket for each egg given to different people and thereby raising the chance that someone will make it to the destination without dropping their basket.

CRACKING THE MAELSTROM

May 8th, 2019

Modern life is replete with all manner of vicious cycles that can gently grasp a person and slowly nudge them into a quickening whirlpool that descends towards velocities and forces that become harder and harder to escape.

Debt

Depression

Addiction

These can all gather unto themselves in such powerful ways that some people quite literally do not ever escape such a fate. 

It is perhaps no surprise that these three vicious cycles in particular can often have overlap.  All three of these revolve in some way around chronic forms of stress.  Debt can easily cause this stress, such stress can be a major contributing factor to depression, and addiction is often a short-term solution to such stress and depression.

The neuroendocrinologist Dr. Robert Sapolsky has been at the forefront of elucidating just how toxic chronic stress is for people.  From digestive problems to accelerated aging to diminished portions of the brain crucial for learning and memory, stress, if activated for sustained periods slowly kills people.

With regards to the vicious cycles that we might encounter and get sucked down into, it should seem like an obvious catch-22.  The more chronic stress a person experiences, the less equipped they become to invent a viable way out of the situation that is causing such stress.    

It’s well correlated that financial stress lowers fluid IQ.   And this is the kind of problem where utilizing as much intelligence as possible is crucial if not fundamental to changing and improving one’s financial situation.   Such a correlation makes it far more likely, indeed increasingly likely that the more stress a person feels on account of debt, the less likely they will be able to muster some ingenuity and see a solution out of such a situation.

This is a positive feedback loop, pure and simple.  But for the individual who gets sucked into such a vicious cycle there is absolutely nothing positive about it.

The symmetrical view here is to say that a person’s intelligence, under the influence of such chronic stress enters a negative feedback loop.  As stress begins to have an effect on a person’s ability to make good decisions and therefore make bad decisions more likely, the fallout of such bad decisions again make more bad decisions even more likely.  It’s reasonable to say that fluid intelligence in this case is stuck in a negative feedback loop where less optimal decisions hobble available intelligence for future decisions.

This horrible Maelström, like the one in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, does have a few counter-intuitive hacks embedded in it’s nature.

In Poe’s short story a sailor gets sucked down into a Maelström and as he’s swirling round and round, clinging to the deck of the ship he’s on, he becomes calm and merely begins to observe the chaos around him.  In that calmness he observes that objects of a certain shape get tossed out of the Maelström back up to safer waters.

It would seem crazy to abandon a ship, but the sailor lashes himself to an object like the ones he sees escape the Maelström and he jumps overboard, and inevitably his observation serves him well.  He escapes the Maelström.

The counter-intuitive aspect of this situation is key, and it can serve anyone who likewise finds themselves trapped in some vicious cycle.

It’s perfectly reasonable to think that if the sailor had remained in a state of panic he never would have made his key observation.

Poe intuits a truth about stress that is exactly what researchers like Dr. Robert Sapolsky have illuminated.

For the person suffering from financial stress, or any other whirlpool of stress, the first solution is not necessarily to meet the problem head on.

The Maelström can be cracked if we first Pause and address the root cause of inability: stress.

This is the true whirlpool that is perpetuating many bad situations, and if that stress is first addressed, than our minds can become more able and adept at solving the external problems of our life.

But how we might wonder if it’s an external problem that is causing such stress, as with debt?

Luckily, the most effective forms of stress-reduction are free: such as meditation.

It may seem somewhat absurd that a person with debt spiraling out of control should meditate.  Such a person should work harder, right?

Though, would it not serve such a person better to work smarter instead of just harder?

What if we can work harder and smarter?  Might we resolve our problems quicker?

Probably.

The tiny amount of time required each day for meditation to have a substantial impact on the reduction of stress can pay compounding dividends in terms of a person’s ability to then think more clearly and with ingenuity.

Like Poe’s sailor who becomes strangely calm, meditation, with a couple short months of dedicated practice can bring a calmness to a person that may enable them to make a key insight, one that might help them crack the Maelström and escape it, instead of fruitlessly trying to fight it.

This episode references Episode 386: White Diamond and Episode 23: Pause

PLANS & PROGRESS

May 7th, 2019

These two concepts are at odds with one another.  One of these concepts is an honest assessment of how far we have come whereas the other is often an imagined certainty about the future.  Progress is that honest assessment, however it too is mapped forward into the future, as in, the progress we hope to make.  It is an active verb that we push forward with into the future. 

We do so presumably with plans, however a plan is a cold and static noun. And because of that, plans should be kept relatively short so that we can quickly gain any result and feedback generated by acting on such a plan and forgo the risk of marching off in unproductive directions for long periods of time simply in the name of the plan. 

The longer we spend marching off in an unproductive direction, and the more we invest in a sunk cost of such a direction, the longer it takes to make a useful pivot away from such an ineffective plan.  This pivot also becomes less likely as the cognitive fallacy of sunk-cost accumulates in the mind. 

Plans are somewhat confused with instructions.  They appear extremely similar in their make up.  Both are a blueprint for some achievable end.  The difference of course is that instructions are tried and true ways of a achieving whatever ends they instruct.  Plans, on the other hand are educated guesses at best.  The similarity between these two is unfortunate because people can easily fall into a false sense of security about the efficacy of a plan in the same way we can often rightfully rely on instructions.  Any plan, however, is far from tried and true.

Progress, as an active verb that describes the future we aim to create, requires a strategy that is equally active and agile. 

Our strategy is ultimately and ideally an arsenal of mental models and evolving cognitive frameworks that should change based on newly acquired information.  Once an understanding of this information is integrated into these models and frameworks, that combined strategy then outputs a plan.  The smaller and more concrete the better. 

If however our plans are large, vague and reach far into the future, there is most likely gross weaknesses within our cognitive framework and the mental models that it employs.

This lack of robustness and antifragility within our cognitive framework leaves us vulnerable to many cognitive mistakes, namely in this case, the sunk-cost fallacy wherein we follow a plan irrespective of new information that indicates that abandoning the plan would be a better plan.  In such a case our strategy lacks the ability to cut emotional ties to such plan and print out a new plan that successfully incorporates new information. The mental skill here is the ability to continually question one’s current efforts and size them up against the core aims that we seek to achieve.  If they cease to match, than we need to slip such anchors and sail in new directions.

Progress and the perseverance to pursue such progress require a strategy that can evolve plans quickly.  An absolute necessity of taking action on quickly evolving plans benefits both from our ability to emotionally distance our self from current lines of action, but also from shorter plans.  The shorter the plan, the quicker it can be carried out and the faster we can potentially receive more information to update our strategy and pivot –even if only slightly- towards a tighter range in which direction we sense our goal may lie. 

Progress, in retrospect looks like a set of instructions.  The narrative is always clear and seems obvious after the fact, but progress while looking forward has none of this clarity nor certainty.  Looking forward, progress is a probability cloud that we are constantly seeking to shrink as we take action and integrate information.  The smaller and tighter our plans that we formulate to carry out this process, the quicker and more efficiently we shrink that probability cloud of the future where our goals may exist.   Ultimately, if our goal is possible and we can pivot intelligently towards it, or stumble with luck on to it, that probability cloud vanishes as the future becomes the present where our goal emerges.

This episode references Episode 37: The Instructions are Always Written Afterwards and Episode 72: Persevere vs. Pivot