Author: Christopher

On May 25, 2022, Darian Woods asked Tyler Cowen in an interview,

“How successful do you want to be, or how ambitious are you?”

It is a question from Tyler’s book, Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World.

Tyler answered,

“I want to be what I call an information trillionaire. I’ve just spent most of my life studying things, reading, traveling the world. I’ve been to over 100 countries, tried to learn as much social science as I can. So maybe right now I’m some version of an information billionaire, but I want to do better than that and be, you know, the information trillionaire. I don’t think I’ll get there. Like, billion to trillion is a long leap, but that’s how ambitious I am.”

Compare Tyler’s statement to the following excerpt by David Deutsch from The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes–and Its Implications.

“I remember being told, when I was a small child, that in ancient times it was still possible for a very learned person to know everything that was known. I was also told that nowadays so much is known that no one could conceivably learn more than a tiny fraction of it, even in a long lifetime. The latter proposition surprised and disappointed me. In fact, I refused to believe it.

It was not that I wanted to memorize all the facts that were listed in the world’s encyclopaedias: on the contrary, I hated memorizing facts.

By ‘known’, I meant understood. The idea that one person might understand everything that is understood may still seem fantastic, but it is distinctly less fantastic than the idea that one person could memorize every known fact. For example, no one could possibly memorize all known observational data on even so narrow a subject as the motions of the planets, but many astronomers understand those motions to the full extent that they are understood. This is possible because understanding does not depend on knowing a lot of facts as such, but on having the right concepts, explanations and theories. One comparatively simple and comprehensible theory can cover an infinity of indigestible facts. “

The fundamental difference is not a matter of ambition or ability. It is epistemology. It is interesting to see that having better ideas about the world affects the height of one’s ambitions. In an information-rich world, knowledge is what we truly need. Knowledge changes things. Knowledge is power.

Charlie Munger, the famous former vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, said, “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.”

What is the purpose of thinking?

“The purpose of thinking is to let the ideas die instead of us dying.”
― Alfred North Whitehead

But how?

“By criticizing our theories we can let our theories die in our stead.”
― Karl Popper, Myth of the Framework

See also:
The Mind as an Ecosystem

Links to this note: Why Governing Ideas Matters

When viewed epistemologically, addiction can be understood as a state where an individual’s capacity for critical thinking and knowledge creation is significantly impaired or overridden by an idea that coerces the individual to engage in a particular behavior. Where does the causal power of this idea come from and how can we destabilize its anti-rational power?

In an epistemological framework, particularly within critical rationalism, the growth of knowledge requires freedom to conjecture, criticize, and adapt. Addiction represents a form of coercion that restricts this freedom. The compulsive nature of addiction undermines one’s ability to make autonomous decisions and engage in rational criticism of one’s behavior.

Addiction can be seen as a feedback loop where the addictive behavior becomes a dominant mode of thought and action. This loop inhibits the creation of new knowledge because the addict’s focus narrows to maintaining the addiction rather than exploring and learning from a broad range of experiences. The epistemic process of conjecture and refutation is disrupted, leading to stagnation or decline in knowledge growth.

Let’s think about addiction as an idea (or set of ideas) from an evolutionary perspective. They continue to survive by limiting or removing the possibility of competition through certain conditions such as restricting or invalidating new information. If those conditions are disrupted, there may be an opportunity to destabilize these authoritarian ideas, and if the idea/s are destabilized the addiction will stop.

Addressing addiction epistemologically involves restoring the individual’s capacity for critical thinking and autonomous decision-making. The aim is to re-establish the conditions under which the individual can freely conjecture and criticize, thereby resuming the growth of knowledge.

(I believe I got this idea from somewhere but I don’t remember where)

If you look at the etymology of the word “enjoy” you would find that it originated from the Old French “enjoier” which means ‘give joy to’. The word was a causative verb. This would make sentences like “I enjoy eating” problematic to understand. How could you give joy to eating? Could the way you eat, the size of your bite, the way you chew, the timing of the swallow, and the pause to savor the taste give joy? Maybe to you but not to the activity of eating. Better still consider the sentence “I enjoy video games”. How could one provide joy to software? Playing the game offers joy to the player. That is what it is designed for. (Maybe this is just semantics)

But let’s entertain this thought for a little while: What if we are the source of joy? We create it and give it accordingly. And sometimes the joy we create gets reflected back to us. This would mean that the video game is a medium for joy to be transmitted from the makers of the game to us.

The view of joy as something to be made and given changes how we think about our experiences. It suggests that when we want to feel joy we must make it and give it away. It challenges the notion that our circumstance is the determining factor of our quality of life. I don’t know if it is true but it may be useful.

“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 devote all his attention to it. Later, if his circumstances change, he may not be as open to taking up other opportunities as he might have been. If that is so, it is not the video game that is doing him harm, it is that he has been funnelled down a blind alley and not let out. The thing to do is to let him out, not to steal his last remaining source of joy and learning. If someone is in that state, just like with any compulsive behaviour, the cure is simply to offer him other things which he might prefer. There will be some things which he prefers; nobody actually spends twenty-four hours a day playing video games so, in the remaining time, try conversation, try anything. If that does not work, don’t blame the video game. Be thankful that there is still something good in the child’s life, to tide him over.”

David Deutsch, Video games: a unique educational environment

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 competency, Utilization, is considered to be one of his greatest contributions to psychotherapy (Core Competencies Manual R-2019, pg 31)

“Simply put, utilization is a psychotherapeutic strategy that engages circumstances, habits, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, symptoms, or resistances in service of the overarching goals of therapy.”

Essentially, almost anything the patient has can benefit the patient if you are creative enough.

Here are 3 more quotes about it.

“Exploring a patient’s individuality to ascertain what life learnings, experiences, and mental skills are available to deal with the problem … (and) then utilizing these uniquely personal internal responses to achieve therapeutic goals”
(Erickson & Rossi, 1979, p. 1).

“Utilization theory emphasizes that every individual’s particular range of abilities and personality characteristics must be surveyed in order to determine which preferred modes of functioning can be evoked and utilized for therapeutic purposes”
(Rossi, 1980, p. 147).

“The therapist’s task should not be proselytizing on the patient with his own beliefs and understandings. What is needed is the development of a therapeutic situation permitting the patient to use his own thinking, his own understandings, his own emotions in the way that best fits him in his scheme of life”
(Erickson, 1980, p. 223).

Welcome to ‘Big Foggy Missing’. Big Foggy Missing is a game where we get to play detective. 

When we are overwhelmed by frustration, self-doubt, and despair we sometimes get lost in our emotions. It seems like there is no way out.

But what if the secret to finding a way out is for us to be a detective?

In ‘Big Foggy Missing’ our goal is to identify:

1. What is bigger than it should be?
2. What is clouding how we see and think?
3. What is missing that should be there in our view of the world?

But here’s the twist, we’re not just asking, we’re dissecting, and exploring the nuances of this puzzle, determined to uncover the truths hidden beneath.

Let’s dive into the ‘Big Foggy Missing’.

Have you ever wondered, ‘Why can’t I be like everyone else?’

We are not going to focus on answering this question. Instead, our focus is the question, where we break down the overwhelming parts and make it more focused.

Big

In this question what have you made bigger than it is?

Think about it.

“Why can’t I be like everyone else?”

Have you figured it out?

How big is “everyone”?

“Everyone” is huge. There are 8.1 billion people in the world.

Make it smaller.

What is the smallest you can make it?

“Why can’t I be like…Sarah?”

I think there is something else that is bigger than it is.

“Be” is also huge. “Be” in what way? 

Every way? You want something specific.

What is it?

So now maybe you have something that looks like this

“Why can’t I be sociable and not awkward like Sarah?”

Foggy

Something is foggy. It is limiting how we see things. 

What is it?

If you said “can’t” you are correct. “Can’t” means it is impossible.

So asking the question, “Why can’t I be…” is pointless if it is impossible but that may not be true. You most likely can be however you want to some extent. That would certainly be more than where you are now. So now we have the following:

“Why was I more awkward and not as sociable as Sarah?”

Missing

What could be missing? 

Let’s go with something and see where we end up.

Maybe what is missing is when you want to become this ideal version of yourself. For some people, the word that is missing is “now”. They want to have those characteristics now or at some previous point. Including this insight into our new question:

“Why was I more awkward and not as sociable as Sarah at the party last weekend?”

Review

So let’s back up and review what we have done so far.

We started with:

“Why can’t I be like everyone else?”

Next, we realized “everyone” was too big so we made it smaller, and “be” was too big. This resulted in,

“Why can’t I be sociable and not awkward like Sarah?”

We noticed that “can’t” looked foggy so we cleared it up. This changed the question to,

“Why am I more awkward and not as sociable as Sarah?”

Finally, we noticed something was missing – time. This transformed the question into,

“Why was I more awkward and not as sociable as Sarah at the party last weekend?”

Now this is a question worth exploring.

Your problems are hard. 

Don’t make them harder than they need to be.

 

There’s a man who wants nothing, nothing at all. He lives day to day, come what may.

There’s a man who wants something simple, something easily found. Something he has to reach for, but on the ground.

There’s also a man who wants something hard and rare. Hard to get, and far from here.

And then there’s a man who wants everything. A little more here, a little more there, a little more everywhere.

Do you want something?

Really?

What is it?

Is it simple, or hard and rare, or everything yet fair?

Tell me, are you playing the game or being played by the game, without a care?

By the way, have you decided what you want?

---

There’s a man who has nothing to lose, nothing at all. Maybe just some booze.

And a man who has simple things to lose, things that are easily found. Easy to reach, not beyond the ground.

Then there’s a man who has something hard and rare to lose. Something once in lifetime, and to keep, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do.

And lastly, a man who has everything to lose. A life of gamble, with no preamble.

What do you have?

What do you really have?

Is it really yours?

Is it yours to keep, or yours to lose?

Is it simple, or hard and rare, or everything yet fair?

I wonder, are you playing the game or being played by the game, without a care?

As they say, if you don’t know who’s the patsy, then it’s…

Try.

Try to try.

Try again.

If stagnant try differently.

Try small.

Try slowly.

Try fast.

And if you must, try something else.

To attain the things that are worth having, that are valuable, and highly sort after there’s no best way. There’s no shortcut, no guarantee, and no easy way. It is hard. It is long. It’s not necessarily complicated. It can be achievable and obtainable. It is worth the effort.

So learn the habit of trying.

Just try.