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Spinoza and Descartes disagreed about whether we can neutrally assess a proposition before believing it. Descartes argued that this was possible and necessary in order to be rational. Spinoza suggested that it’s simply impossible — we must first accept something as true before we can understand it. Daniel Gilbert tested this [summary] about 30 years ago and it looks like Spinoza is the winner. It takes effort to unbelieve something after hearing it, even when told it is false.

This seems important. By default, we seem to immediately believe what we understand — what we read or hear or see. This is a bit scary for epistemic hygiene. On the plus side, it makes our beliefs quite malleable. Read something that you want to believe, or perhaps just say it to yourself, and it may become so. Prayer and affirmations are then expected to be quite effective.

Then you have to wonder, do beliefs even matter? To some extent, what we say we believe seems to correlate with our actions. But I’m pretty confused on this topic.

For the past 5 years or so I’ve been having lucid dreams pretty regularly. To the unfamiliar, a lucid dream is where you realize you’re in a dream. And then realize that you can do whatever you want (kind of) since it’s a dream. Anyway, last night I was in the middle of one where I was running along a coastline on wet rocks. I noticed I was running much faster than I would want to in “real life”. Then I considered the psychological consequences of that. Is it possible that I’m subtly training myself to, in this case, be more reckless when running on wet rocks?

It doesn’t seem implausible. Some models of dreaming view it as a kind of “practice mode”. We use simulation to get more practice, thereby preparing us better for the real thing. That would imply that we are relying on dreams to learn. I can only hope that my kinesthetic learning from lucid dreams are sufficiently compartmentalized to only be active when a sense of “this isn’t real” is also present. That doesn’t sound like a great bet.

Today I was listening to an Ibiza cocktail bartender describing how he got into the business. Someone asks if he ever took a class or any formal training. The response was a bit of a chortle. “It’s way overpriced and you don’t learn the little important details. The best way to learn how to make cocktails at a busy bar is by working there and slowly picking up on how the bartenders do it.”

While he was saying that, I thought of the trope of how useless business school is (other than for networking). It seems much of a liberal arts education falls prey to this attack. Not to say that it can’t be valuable — I’ve spent much time over the past year pouring over philosophy and psychology. The problem is when you rely solely on this to then go out into the world and do things. What we’re missing is a viable apprenticeship system for much of the economy. How many of us went to bartending school thinking that’s the fast track to becoming a star bartender?

I’m staring at a chocolate bar with a few ants munching away at it. They carve winding valleys on the surface and presumably some subterranean tunnels. My first reaction was: “why aren’t you silly ants going in straight lines and being more efficient?” Then I saw the likely flaw. I’m no myrmecologist but it seems reasonable for ants to be Experts in Candy Consumption™. If someone is confused about the efficiency of ant chocolate eating paths, it’s probably me.

Presumably, they follow subtle gradients of chocolate density, sweetness, and other characteristics that I lack sensitivity to. Defaulting to an idea of doing things in orderly (legible) paths as the “efficient” one seems like a side effect of living in a culture of rational, top-down planning. Episteme replacing metis.

On the topic of being more mindful of what feels good and doing that, where does mindfulness itself fit in? Everyone seems to nod their heads about mindfulness being “good” and meditation being “good for you”. For pretty much everybody, trying to remain mindful while acting is quite difficult, if not aversive. It can even be painful. Formal sitting meditation is even more difficult. While I find both challenging, I also find the experience rewarding and enjoyable. It does feel good. But presumably, for myself starting out, and for many others, it wasn’t always this way.

In this case, and many like it, things are a bit more confusing. We may start off not liking something but after a while change our minds and see it as enjoyable. Our desires are hostage to our past experiences. This is true about many things: from the enjoyment of exercise to being actually held hostage.

You have some “bad” habit you want to get rid of, or some new “good” habit or goal you want to undertake. However, there are only 24 hours in the day — and you are already using them all! I keep getting stuck on how powerful this idea is, at least for me. You are always and already using all of your time. To do something new, you have to give something up. Also, our capacity for reason is incredibly limited. Our habitual actions form over years of conditioning (classical and operant). Most of the behaviors that have stuck around are doing something for you. They are rewarding you, somehow. Sometimes it’s for eating high-density energy stores (junk food counts). Sometimes you create a plausible social excuse for failing at something, thereby allowing you to maintain your identity (changing that is hard).

We rarely have any idea why we do what we do. When you consciously try to replace an action that you’ve reasoned to be “bad” without a strong sense of what it’s doing for you, it’s quite likely to laugh at you.

Do you know that yummy feeling you get when fantasizing about a favorite food or activity? An itchy excitement, a wellspring of energy. You go to great lengths to get yummy stuff. Not surprisingly, the yumminess is a big factor for whether a goal or plan succeeds. Does it feel yummy, does it excite you? Not just the “win” scenario — where you achieve the outcome — but the actions you expect to need to take. If it doesn’t feel yummy, you will likely have a hard slog ahead of you. You may be trying to force something onto yourself — using reason to try to convince yourself of a decision that your gut disagrees with. You can try to will your way through it, but success rates for this are not so inspiring. Instead, can you find a variation that is yummier?

Yumminess is a spectrum. Writing code may not be as thrilling as watching Netflix, but for many, it is more enjoyable than doing the dishes. Some actions that feel relatively yummy to you may be painful to others. It may not be obvious how but you can usually find a way to get paid doing pretty much anything. Consider the possibility that you don’t need to change who you are and what feels good in order to succeed.

Take some plan or goal you have and imagine a brilliant success. Everything went great, and now you’re in the future celebrating. Maybe your team is there, or your family and friends. You may even be giving a speech regaling everyone with the story of what happened. So then try asking yourself: What must have happened in order for this success story to come about? Try to be as concrete as possible, point out things that an impartial observer can identify. This is pro-hindsight, essentially an inversion of pre-hindsight. Rather than imagining failure, we imagine success.

For the past year or so, I’ve been focusing on getting better at connecting with people. Both those familiar to me as well as strangers. To look back and have succeeded at this, I would need to become someone who can make others feel instantly comfortable. To be able to walk up and put someone at ease. I’d be at ease opening up and having deep conversations — sharing things about myself that most people rarely do. By painting this picture of success, I immediately notice outcomes that I can target. These tie to specific skills I can develop. To get better at this, I’ve started experimenting with ways to practice these individual skills (for many, by granularizing).

Like with pre-hindsight, there are “obvious” things that pop out once we imagine concrete scenarios and reason about their prerequisites. We often daydream of success scenarios — “fantasies” — but fail to go one step further and ask what must happen to get there. Maybe because this often deflates the fantasy, and if we’re having fun then let’s not do that. But if it’s something we really want to achieve, this move is helpful.

Thinking Toys Archives

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With many Thinking Toys, it’s helpful to start with a specific problem. Yet, some are especially useful when you don’t know what you want. Rather than starting with an issue, begin by examining your resources. Who are your friends, what are your hobbies, and what skills have you mastered? What kinds of levers can you pull? Combined in different ways, these represent the set of affordances available to you. The actions you perceive yourself capable of taking in any moment. Effectuation is the process of exploring these affordances without knowing what they’ll lead to.

Rather than trying to create a causal, step-by-step plan to get from point A to B, we begin by experimenting. By trying new things, we uncover interesting destinations (goals). So interesting that we may decide to reorient towards them. Or we may fall on our ass and look silly. That’s a good sign, though — if you’re succeeding too often, you’re not learning. What are some low-risk, cheap actions you have available to you? Especially focus on ones that don’t seem useful, or may look weird. These are types of actions you wouldn’t normally try. They tend to lead to the most learning and surprise.

For the past few years, I have avoided having a permanent home. I’ve been staying in short-term rentals as I move from place to place. I’m not quite on vacation as I end up doing similar “productive” things wherever I am. It also may not be obvious why moving around would be helpful rather than annoying. But it’s not especially costly for me, so it seemed worth exploring. I’ve learned that changing how and where I live and work has a tremendous impact on my ideation process. By changing contexts, both physical and social, I’m growing quicker than before. Unexpected benefits include being less attached to physical objects and experiencing less neuroticism over living conditions. This has been tremendously valuable to me but was not a specific goal that I set out with.

Effectuation is useful even when you do have a particular goal in mind. It can be vague and open-ended, like “live a good life” or “make money”. It can also be specific, like “increase sales in Q3”. All that’s necessary is having an open mind about how you will achieve your aim. Perhaps you have the semblance of a plan but want to explore other options. Or, you may not even know what your first milestones are and can’t granularize. When you’re not super confident in your goals or your plan, you want to be in exploration mode. Follow paths of least resistance (be like water) and try cheap experiments (control your downside, the upside is harder to predict). In this exploration, you will be shaping your goals. Your desires will be shifting as you learn more about the world and yourself!

This makes effectuation especially useful when feeling stuck or overwhelmed by a problem. You can adopt the mindset that any new action will lead to more learning and information. This gives you more insight into the situation and makes taking future action easier.

💡Thinking Toys Archives