Path Dependent

Learning is path dependent. There is a real risk of Group Hypnosis on the path. Money and meaning are made in containers. Within constraints. With shape and form. It takes time and effort to build these containers. The things we care about, may be connected to things we don’t care about. Things we used to care about. Perhaps even things we think are wrong. We don’t get to pick and choose everything to be exactly as we want it to be. There are trade offs and concessions. We cloak the truth in a shared story or interpretation. There may come a point at which pointing out that the Emperor is wearing no clothes becomes worthwhile. Before that, it may be fine to have a naked ego maniac playing bossman if it doesn’t mess up the things you care about. When he suggests strip poker to take the things you care about, it becomes a little too obvious. Somehow, we need to detach and keep learning rather than defending our container. While still defending the people we care about in the containers. 

Best Practice

One of my favourite essays to regularly reread is Scott Alexander’s “I can tolerate anything except the outgroup”. It reminds me of how some of our biggest fights are with the people we most agree with. Because we care so much about the same issues. We understand the same nuance that other people don’t even see. An advantage of being a Global Citizen is the natural social experiment that goes on. We get to see Best Practice at play in a variety of contexts. Our issues, but not our issues. What if we changed this aspect? What if we keep that aspect the same? A strong temptation in any research is to provide Public Relations and Legal Arguments for pre-existing beliefs. Numbers and words to pad our gut feel. Looking far from home is often an easier way to unpack issues that are too close to see. Then, like Bruce Lee, we can take what is useful, discard what is not, and add what is uniquely our own.

Too Close

Pattern Seekers

Human Brilliance is partly over-confidence, the ability to make and tolerate mistakes, and the ability to believe things the evidence doesn't support. Computers still just crunch the numbers, and are just starting to learn to learn. For the first few years of our lives, we are thrown into a confusing world that just carries on regardless. Without us knowing the rules. We just have to catch up. 

Our magic is Self-Hypnosis. We all live in constructed realities based partly on the genuine rules of the universe, but mostly on our interpretation of those rules and how they have worked out for us. Repeated trial and error until our self-delusion that we understand kicks in. Till we 'crack the code' and see the underlying pattern.

Patterns are simplifications. There are patterns in everything. We attribute meaning to those patterns. Cause and Effect. If we get the pattern and know what reliably follows an action, we don't need to know anything more. Even if the story we tell ourselves about it is 'wrong'. Even if there are lots of unnecessary bits to our story.

Our leaders are typically the best at pretending they understand. The best at falsely projecting confidence. Through trial and error, we have learnt to follow those who appear to know what they are doing. The strongest. The loudest. The fastest.

Beautiful messy creatures. Full of emotion, frustration, desires, dreams, and alternative realities. Bumping into a world that just carries on regardless.

No Try

The trick in hypnosis is that there is no trick. It is just a deep state of relaxation, and a willingness to hand over control to someone else. If it isn't up to you to decide what the obstacles are, you are more likely to do things without even trying. More likely to do or not do. More let's see exploration than I can't predetermination. I am a 'Try Hard'. If someone says 'You can't lift your hand', I find it incredibly difficult not to challenge them and test if I can. Of course, I can lift my hand. That isn't the point. If I challenge on that first point, I don't get to go on the journey. Fiction can go further than fact because it isn't constrained by our understanding of each step.

Controlled Hallucination

What we experience is a controlled hallucination. Our brain creates our world, from various inputs based on what we have sensed before. Our brain creates our world, through trial and error. A tree only becomes a tree once I have the word, the smell, the feel and the knowledge of what it is. It is closer to the string of noise we hear when someone speaks a language we don't understand. Words aren't separate from each other, they become separate as we add meaning and context. We don't have to understand the world for a best guess to be useful. Tacit Knowledge is when I understand something, but don't know why I understand it. I may have a useful story to make sense of it. Whether that story is right or wrong doesn't matter, if it helps me do what I need to do. When our hallucinations clash, we need new stories. Shared stories.

Like Magic

Derren Brown is a magician who doesn't believe in a magic. At least not it the mystical sense. He frequently denounces those who claim psychic or paranormal abilities and yet performs the same tricks that they do. The thing is that with sufficient mastery, people can develop skills that appear to be magical. I find touch typing a little magical. That my fingers become an extension of what I am thinking after sufficient practise still leaves me in awe when I do think about it. Before the printing press and widespread literacy, even the ability to communicate over long distances must have seemed magical. We used to be able to take technology apart and then put it back together to figure out how it worked. Nowadays you take things apart at your peril. I like the idea of a deity messing with us. We have become so used to someone just saying something works (without divine intervention) that we may accept something that is impossible without even batting an eyelid.

Derren Brown

Source: www.theatrepeople.com

We also ascribe some learning to an inherent talent, and so if there is a struggle assume that means that we are not good at it or it is not meant to be. This ignores the hump before a skill is learnt and our different approaches to dealing with the hump. For some, they are able to pick up momentum early on. They grasp enough to start to believe they have a natural talent and so push on. For others, they need to fight on despite a feeling of clumsiness and self doubt. Some other sort of love for the subject needs to push them on.

At some stage the magic kicks in with most fields. My first boss used to magically be able to identify the two or three things I felt slightly uncomfortable about in a report with a few minute skim read. Magic but not magic. Chess masters can simultaneously play multiple boards against multiple opponents at the same time. Magic but not magic. I was going to use Federer as my third example, but I think he was put here by the deity I mentioned who was tricking us. I am not fooled.

I wrote about how Derren Brown's 'Mind Tricks' gave me an insight into hypnosis in 'Faking It'. The essence is that all hypnosis is is a deep state of relaxation and openness to suggestibility. This releases all sorts of potential because while useful, our scepticism also restricts us based on what we think is or isn't possible, or what we think are or aren't our talents. I think scepticism is very useful and it is actually more healthy to be aware of your clumsiness and self doubt. The world is complicated and being too confident that you get it, is a recipe for disaster. At the same time, excessive self doubt can stop you making the magical leaps to things that are actually possible but leave you with a sense of awe.

In the same way I argue for a 'Bull Quota' when listening to others to get to the good stuff, I think we need to learn to allow ourselves similar leeway when learning. The way to rationalise this is that these are emotional techniques that help us because we aren't completely rational. If the tricks help and no one gets hurt, then there is no harm done. Amy Cuddy makes a powerful case for using body language in this way. If we know that 'faking it' makes the 'faking' disappear, then perhaps we are being fake by not faking it?

Faking it?

Derren Brown's 'Tricks of the Mind' is fascinating. It doesn't go into too much detail, but does give a bunch of links to books on various subjects if you do want to go deeper. He is a skeptic who does things anyway. 

One particular area he talks about is hypnosis, which he doesn't believe is an 'altered state'. When it works, it works because of 4 reasons (in his opinion):

1. The subject is faking it, and is being encouraged to fake it by the hypnotist.
2. The subject is faking, but only because he feels too embarrassed to call a halt to his performance.
3. The subject is really trying to experience the suggestions and is helping the process along by doing his best not to 'block' them, and really 'going for it'.
4. The subject is again very happy to help the process along by acting out the suggestions regardless of any strange compulsion not to do so, but at the same time is the sort of person who can easily 'forget himself' and seize the permission granted by the hypnotic demonstration to act outrageously. Afterwards, it is more comfortable for him to put his actions down to an amazing experience he can't explain and believe he was in a special state. Most probably he will believe the hypnotist has his perceived ability anyway, so it is easy to take this step.

I am a bit of an extrovert myself and am up for this sort of thing. So once, myself and a similarly extroverted friend were at a hypnotist show and both went up. Difference was... it worked for him (and the hypnotist said it didn't require much effort), and not with me. It didn't work with me, because I was very keen to 'really' experience it and not fake it. The whole time I was conscious of what was going on. So was the friend. The difference was, that when it came to suggestions that I thought if I did I was clearly faking, I didn't do them... so I walked off the stage fairly early, disappointed. He went on with it. He says he felt really relaxed and like he could stop at any time. Perhaps it was because he could... but just didn't want to, and was less worried about 'faking it' than me. This seems the most likely to me. He is a great guy, and not nearly as concerned about being 'judged' as I was (even if I would be the only person who knew the truth).

It kind of reminded me of when I was younger and very involved in the Church. When there was a 'slain in the spirit' wave with a number of fellow church goers speaking in tongue and having various ticks. I was super keen to experience this, and really wanted to... but didn't want to fake it. So didn't. And much like the hypnotist show, I would leave disappointed.

But... what if all this is is a deep relaxation, openness to suggestibility and in a safe environment where you are not putting on any pretense at all? Since reading these bits and pieces, I have been more actively giving this a go in my Yoga classes. And it does make a substantial difference. The 'magic altered state' of hypnosis/meditation etc. is perhaps no more than a willingness to relax, focus and believe something possible.

So, you can be a skeptical atheist and still get the good stuff without the guilt. Awesome.