Understanding understanding
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Understanding understanding
I hope you all had a wonderful Father's Day. I certainly did. And I so much appreciated all the beautiful stories many of you shared with me on why this day is special to you.
This week, I am heading back into the underlying reason for why I started to write these newsletters: the nature of our understanding.
We all look at the world from our own perspectives. We all have glasses on that are shaded by our particular lived experiences. And to us, reality is the way we see it. But that is, of course, NOT the way others see it.
I try my best to expose myself to ideas outside my own natural habitat. It is not easy. And it hasn't gotten easier with algorithms incessantly feeding us more of ourselves and less of others. It's also somewhat "unnatural" to lean into discomfort. To seek friction. Most of us don't like it.
But here is the problem. Best articulated by Mark Twain (or, as usual, he seems to be getting the credit for it):
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know that just ain’t so.”
“When life gets scary and difficult, we tend to look for solutions in places where it is easy or at least familiar to do so, and not in the dark, uncomfortable places where real solutions might lie.”
Our culture seems stuck. Stuck between very rigid positions that I believe are firmly wrong. Or at least irrelevant, incomplete, or impractical. We are clearly looking for answers in the wrong places. Or at the very least, exclusively in the places we know.
Wittgenstein said that "to understand is to know what to do". While that clearly sounds simple, it isn't. But it happens to be true. At least, to me. And, I bet, to almost all people. The problem we are dealing with in these turbulent times is that what we used to know isn't so anymore. And it introduces uncertainties, mysteries, and doubt.
Many are clinging to a sense of familiarity and comfort, even though in their more somber moments, they know this is not the solution, either. And that is causing its own set of anxiety and dissatisfaction. We see it all around. From Prozac to Putin.
In order to unstuck ourselves, we need to expand our horizons, stretch our reality, and gain new perspectives. Or, to use a famous Einsteinianism: we can't solve the problems with the same level of thinking that created them.
Forcing myself to write these musings every week helps me widen my own aperture to look for "new" things. I mean I can't keep sending the same old stuff to you. You would get bored! So I thank you for reading as it helps me to discover new ideas and perspectives and also rediscover old ones. I obviously hope that you also find some value in reading something different and occasionally stumbling upon a new thought that could help shape your view on a topic.
This week, I was inspired by revisiting Peter Kaufman's book on all things Charlie Munger, but specifically reading and listening to a great talk he gave to the Cal Poly Pomona Economics Club on the topic of a multidisciplinary approach to thinking. It was shared graciously by Shane Parrish at the Knowledge Project.
I took away 2 main things from his talk. First, his method (3 buckets), and second his advice. (So far.) Regarding method, he tries to avoid myopia, limitations, and bias by simply looking at the largest data sets available. His argument was that a huge sample size is your friend. He often looks at three buckets of data. The universe, our biology, and history. From there, we can derive relationships and truths that seem to be consistent over time. A smart method, I would say.
Second, his conclusions (or, at least 2 of them) are worth marinating in and internalizing. Number one: go first and go positive. Meaning, humans are reciprocal in nature. He calls it mirrored reciprocity. If you smile, someone will smile back. If you are kind, most people will return the kindness. If you are positive, others will be, too. So go first (lead) and be positive.
Number two is to be consistent. Do it always. It's the biggest wonder of our world. The law of compounding interest. We are what we repeatedly do. That's the power of consistency and persistence. So he combines these two big ideas into a simple life hack. Go positive, go first, and be constant in doing it.
The notion of multidisciplinary thinking is so relevant to the way we understand the world. We can't just look at our own reservoir of knowledge when we try to understand something. Big data sets are a great start. Add to that a positive and open mindset, and we could, conversation-by-conversation, start building a new form of understanding of the world. One that could bridge gaps, unite more people, and solve most of the problems facing us. Right now, most of our collective energy goes towards fighting a reality we don' like with people we don’t understand. Seems we could do a lot better than that. Don’t you think?
You can listen to and/or Peter Kaufman's talk from the Knowledge Project here.
Have a great week!
