Christopher Govender

83. Becoming Aware Of Our Preconceptions

"Suppose a child is for some reason unhappy with his situation—his home life or school or whatever—and he has very few creative outlets. Playing video games is such a good thing in this respect, that if he finds it, and finds other avenues blocked off, he may

82. Three Key Questions in Problem Solving

When tackling any problem, it's essential to consider the full scope of your actions. Here are three key questions every problem solver should answer: 1. What problem(s) am I trying to solve? 2. What problem(s) am I trying to prevent? 3. What problem(s) am I

81. Proof Of Problems Solved

I asked Perplexity.AI to explain the difference between The Bucket Theory and The Searchlight Theory of Mind. Bucket Theory vs Searchlight Theory The "bucket theory" is Popper's critique of empiricist views that conceive of the mind as a passive receptor of sense data, like an

80. Permission To Speak

One of the most common blocks to knowledge creation is coercion. Coercion relies on authority rather than reason. It is founded on force instead of explanations. It declares that it is not okay to disagree or disobey, but that philosophy is wrong. As rational people, we will exercise our right

79. Leaping To Solutions

One can't tell in advance what kind of knowledge will be needed to solve a particular problem. So, if you had asked somebody in 1900, what kind of knowledge will be required to produce as much electricity as we want in the year 2000, the answer would never

78. Life Is The Greatest Game

At the heart of my life's philosophy is an idea about reality and human potential. The idea is bigger than me as it must be. It describes an approach to living that encourages creativity in solving our problems. George touches on it below. What idea do you think

77. Time Management Is A Misconception

Time is a constant and cannot be controlled or managed. The things we can manage are within the constraints of time. The clock will tick independently of what we do or what happens so what should we manage instead of time? Factory vs Knowledge Worker Before we get to what

76. The Freedom To Correct Errors

A Promising Day For South Africa The South African general elections took place on 29 May 2024. The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party since 1994, lost the parliamentary majority. Today they formed a coalition government with the Democratic Alliance (DA), the runner-up party and primary opposition of the

75. The Mind As A Free Market of Ideas

This morning, I came across an insightful quote: A free market is a continuous process that cannot be held still, an upward process that demands the best (the most rational) of every man and rewards him accordingly. While the majority have barely assimilated the value of the automobile, the creative

74. More Than One Idea

The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it. The way real science goes is that you come up with lots of ideas, and most of them will be wrong. —Francis Crick Whenever a theory appears to you as

73. Being Resourceful

Milton Erickson revolutionized hypnotherapy. His approach to therapy was so unique that many of his students have studied his techniques and methods to distill it to future hypnotherapists. The core competencies he used are as follows: 1. Tailoring 2. Utilization 3. Strategic 4. Destabilization 5. Experiential 6. Naturalistic The second

72. Being More Rational

Today, Seth Godin published a blog post about word clouds. (By the way, he is the king of the daily blog and has changed my life several times. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe!) He made a word cloud of his blog, so I thought I should do the same. I was happy

71. Understanding Ourselves, The World, & Our Place In It

Today, I began thinking about how to connect epistemology (how knowledge grows) with anthropology (the study of culture and behavior). As I mentioned in We Are Born Learning Machines, Seymour Papert mentioned this idea of educators being anthropologists and children being epistemologists. I found this an insightful way to look

70. William Playfair

“It is a mistake to conceive of choice and decision-making as a process of selecting from existing options according to a fixed formula. That omits the most important element of decision-making, namely the creation of new options.” ― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World Yesterday, I

69. We Are Born Learning Machines

"The mind is not a blank slate on which any idea can be impressed. To be understood, a new idea or phenomenon must connect to cognitive structures that are already available to the individual." - Francis Heylighen, What makes a meme successful? In Mindscapes, Seymour Papert describes 3

68. Rational Decisions vs Coercion

As an adult I have responsibilities. I am not forced to do these things against my will. I used to think acting against my will was necessary but that was a misconception. The key difference lies in how we think about this as a dilemma. It is not a choice

67. We Need Explanations

LOL nevermind I figured it out. I'm airing it on TimesquareX for so cheap, sitting on my couch on another continent, thanks to tech (and non-wizardry scientific explanations) I’m replaying it 10 times today on tmx for nyc! yolo https://t.co/s0oEhsmtno pic.twitter.com/r05jDHgnrx

66. The Agent in Agency

I've seen several discussions online about personal agency and how it is learnable. Below are two tweets that advocate for the teachability of agency in their own ways. (You don't have to read their entire tweets. Just know they advocate that agency is teachable in their

65. The Mechanics of Emotional Stress

We all have experienced stressful moments where we were under pressure. We felt overwhelmed and anxious almost like something was pushing or pulling us against our wishes. Sometimes it became too much for us to handle and we broke in some sense. We couldn’t maintain our composure and reacted

64. Being Open-Minded & Working to Become

In a podcast with Tyler Cowen, Michael Nielsen said, “Spaced repetition provides me with another way of paying attention to the world. Any general-purpose strategy you have which will cause you to pay attention to the world is incredibly valuable and so I collect things like that.” We never know

63. Cherishing Information

Knowledge is the answer to our problems. Knowledge can be defined as information that makes things happen, but how do we know which information will do this? We want more, but how can we know what text, image, or sound will spark a transformational insight? Sometimes, this happens by accident

62. Brain Harmony

When I was a kid in the 90s I was crazy about martial arts. They were popular in movies I loved like Enter The Dragon or The Three Ninjas, so I naturally wanted to learn to fight. My parents enrolled me in Karate classes. I enjoyed it for a few

61. Excellence Is Fun

I reviewed The Mundanity Of Excellence again this morning. It is a study of extraordinary performance, “excellence”, using swimming as a medium to understand its general principles. I first learned about it from Josh Waitzkin, someone I admire deeply. He completely changed how I view life from his first episode

60. A Need For Puzzles

Let’s start today with a story about how to catch wild pigs. In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, ‘Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’ The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the

59. Dreams & Regret

3 quotes about finding a way to link dreams to reality. If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) When the imagination