For this vomit, and probably spilling over into the next couple of vomits, I’m going to go through my old notebooks and fulfill all my unfullfilled promises to myself. What that means is that I’m going to write all the things that I said I wanted to write, that I haven’t written yet. Rather than write them the way I had originally intended– which would be silly, because for the most part I no longer have those original intentions– I’m going to write with the intention of getting to know myself better, to understand where I was coming from, to make peace with who I was and who I have become.
# Help correct misperceptions
This was one of the ideas I got about what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to help correct misperceptions. I think this might have been rooted in two things– one, that it was painful for me whenever I realized that I had misperceived the world, and others (and myself, last of all), and it was painful whenever I felt that I had been misperceived myself. A world with less misperception would require more effort but would be less painful.
What are the first steps to reducing misperceptions?
One, to realize that misperception is the rule, not the exception. Every single thing we perceive is actually a misperception to some degree, a map of the territory and not the territory itself.
Two is to work this into our daily lives– to realize that at any moment, anything that we take for granted could be completely wrong. Things are wrong with different degrees of probabilities, and can be wrong in different ways.
How do we get people thinking about this? That’s an overly large question. I think the answer begins with good stories, with great setups and intense punchlines. (Sometimes the punchline might be intense in its subtlety, which also counts. But I digress.)
To get away from the overly large question– I shouldn’t really have to bother trying to get other people to think about this. All I need to do is to correct my own misperceptions.
My hypothesis is this– while there is truth in the fact that helping others is good (and you should always help other people when you get the chance), the BEST way you can help people you haven’t met yet… is to first help yourself, and become someone that they admire, are impressed by and want to learn from. It’s easier to do this with evidence rather than rhetoric. Show, don’t tell.
There is a bit of a circular element when we talk about creating value WITH rhetoric– that is, with great copywriting, with great marketing. Reality is a little messy like that.
I think the proper way to think about it is– if you’re doing the work that you’ll be actually selling to people, that’s value. If you’re just talking about the work you’re going to be doing, or talking about the talking that you’re going to be doing, then you’re kinda fucked.
Let’s end that here for now.
# Asymmetrical Warfare – “There are two kinds of warfare, asymmetrical and stupid.”
I think I really fell in love with this idea because it seemed to me that I was losing horribly at the conventional warfare of my everyday life as a schoolboy. I couldn’t appreciate my setting and environment, I didn’t feel fully engaged, I didn’t feel fully alive, it was tiring and painful and scary and I wasn’t equipped. I was a fish being tasked to climb a tree and I hated it. So the idea of winning the race by jumping into the sea– by changing the frame, by fighting asymmetrical– really appealed to me.
“If you want to win, you have to play “dirty”.
I think it’s very interesting to meditate on what “playing dirty” means. There are some things that clearly violate rules and codes of conduct. But there are other things that are not so clear, and I think all amazing, overwhelming value tends to be created in these grey areas.
The first example that comes to mind is AirBnb. They’re not exactly a hotel. Uber is not exactly a Taxi company. Facebook is not exactly a media company. All of these things “play dirty” in the sense that they eschew the conventional playbooks and attack the problem from a different angle. They question the assumptions, question the frameworks, use different frameworks altogether. It’s a classic disruption scenario.
I’m reminded of a quote by Paul Graham where he says there’s no way that Bill Gates would have been able to become the CEO by climbing a corporate ladder– he could only have built a company underneath him. He said something else similar about Steve Jobs– you can’t hire a visionary product person. Historically, visionary products come from people who start companies themselves and manage not to get fired or destroy themselves/the company along the way
“Choose your battles wisely. Check yourself. Choose the battlefield, weapons, circumstances.”
I suppose this was a reminder to myself to live purposefully. To pay attention to the surroundings, to the circumstances. I was too used to making lots and lots of impromptu, improvised decisions without thinking ahead, without doing the reading. I remember when I first read MBTI, my mind was blown at how narrow my conception had been of other people’s personalities. I assumed people either were like me, liked me, or were wrong in some way. [1]
I then realized that people might be introverted, might not enjoy long, supposedly-logical arguments, so on and so forth. My next mindfuck might have been the 48 Laws of Power, when I realized that social reality was far, far more complex than I had ever imagined previously. People don’t necessarily assume that you have good intentions when you speak the truth. People don’t necessarily mean what they say. The best way to persuade people isn’t necessarily, again, through argument and rhetoric.
This was a reminder to me to pay attention, to be present, to stop making so many assumptions.
I do wonder what’s the next thing that’s going to blow my mind. Lost Illusions, The User Illusion. I’m now re-reading Taleb’s Black Swan, and feeling pretty good about it. It’s a reminder that a lot of the way I make decisions, and the way most people make decisions are very faulty. We have all these assumptions and illusions and confusions.
Okay, publishing this. 2 done, many more to go.
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[1] I don’t mean YOU’RE WRONG!!! in a forceful, I-win-you-lose kinda way, but more like… ‘if I don’t understand it, it’s irrelevant to me’. Which I suppose must be how the ultra-conservative-religious sort might feel about things when they don’t make sense to me.