Bold because Secure

We see based on the experiences we have had. We build an interpretation of the world. We filter the noise and interact with it as best we can. Which makes a feedback cycle essential. We can not help but constantly make mistakes unless we either don’t do anything, or don’t venture very far from what we know we can hold onto. Boldness is built on nurtured insecurities. Boldness is built on a capacity to not only confirm what you already know. With security and a feedback loop, we can act in micro-ambitious ways. Have a go. See what happens. If you have confidence that you have the capacity to unwind mistakes, depending on the unintended consequences, you can be more adventurous. If you are wrapped in fear, you will seek perfection that doesn’t exist, before you act. You will seek the correct way. If you accept that your way is just an interpretation, you can move. Embrace a sense of wildness, and diversity of attempts in which beauty exists. Where we can be open to the chaos of noise, silent periods, bright colours, dull colours, contrast, light, dark, and in all of that find the bits that resonate with us. 

Bold

(because you are secure)

 

See What Happens

In the study of machine learning, they started to see that you can simplify quite complex decisions down to a string of ones and zeros. The computer is not sentient. It has just learnt through multiple repetitions of trial and error, with adjustments. Feedback loops added to complicated processes. It does not understand its own behaviour. Given the ones and zeroes, you can’t extract the knowledge they contain. You can only apply it and see what happens. We are sentient, but even we do not understand ourselves completely. And we have to accept that we can not understand ourselves fully. A lot of our behaviour carries deep knowledge that we can try to interrogate but we might not be able to come to the bottom of. We can constantly be on the path of understanding ourselves through self-awareness, self-search, and self-reflection. That includes recognition of limits, and creating an environment that can cope with lack of understanding and regularly being wrong. That can cope with lack of control.  

Binary Counter

Rabbit Hunting

I played a lot of poker when I was at university and the early stages of work. Poker has a thing called “Rabbit Hunting”. When someone makes the decision to fold, but they ask the dealer to show what the next card “would have been”. It is irrelevant. If it is truly random, you didn’t know the rabbit when you folded. All the cards still in the deck, that you haven’t seen already, could be that card. Your decision has to be made in the light of uncertainty. The world we are in is not a single safe path. There are multiple ways things can play out. You need to be able to take account of all those paths, including in how you judge yourself. Don’t judge yourself purely on how things played out. How they could have played out is just as important a part of the learning process. A decision can still be a bad decision, even if the result was good. Which is not the way that we tend to think. Success carries far less information, and far more danger, than failure. 

Entry Ticket

You can think of risk as stress, and stress is not all bad. “Discomfort is the entry ticket to a meaningful life”. In exercise, you have High Impact Interval Training. Putting the body under stress in a controlled fashion can be a good thing. That is the way we learn. The body follows a use-it-or-lose-it strategy, and is ruthlessly efficient at redistributing its energy. If you start doing press-ups, your muscles will get bigger as your body responds. If you stop doing those press-ups, your muscles will get smaller. If you go for runs regularly, you will get faster and it will become more comfortable. If you stop running for a while, you start getting tired when you go for random, irregular runs. The body directs resources to where they are needed, and takes them away when they are not used. If you want to build up strength, you put your body under stress in a controlled fashion to build up your capacity for when you are in uncontrolled situations. Developing the strength and flexibility to maintain control when you are not in a planned environment. 

1930s Turnstile

 

Finding Others

Find others whose paths resonate with yours. There are lots of people who are generous and willing to talk about the challenges that they have had. Listen to their stories. They are not going to be the same as yours. They are going to be giving younger versions of themselves advice. No one can know your context as well as you. But the more stories you listen to, the more capable you are going to be in various new situations. The more able to avoid mistakes other people have made. That is where the real juice is. Where we learn the most. Through mistakes. Trial and error. Success is less interesting, because success just means there weren't strong enough obstacles in the way. But we don't know why. Admitting that we don't know why is important. Our learning is path dependent. We know what we know, because of the information that has come up on our path. There is too much complexity for anyone to wrap their head around. Particularly if you do it alone. 

Part of your Story

You have to choose a path. We are exposed to a number of lotteries that determine our starting point. That is something we have no choice but to accept. It is a strength. It doesn't feel like it because it feels like there should be a level of fairness. We should all have the same options. I like the idea of alternate histories. We keep having to make choices. That is part of autonomy. The reality is that every choice you make, opens a new set of options, and closes down a different set of options. 

Whenever things go badly, one of the philosophies I have tried to develop to do something awesome that would not have been possible if that thing had not gone wrong. To change the story around that event. The idea of “Fortunate Misfortune”  (See 10 Moral Paradoxes by Saul Smilansky). It is not that you start looking on the horrible moment with affection, but you stop wishing it away. It becomes a part of a positive arch in your story.  

Slow Down

I am a slow learner. Always have been. I started walking late. My Mother says that is because my older brothers carried me everywhere. I started talking late. Maybe I can blame my brothers for that too. It’s nice having someone to blame. When I was 7 years old, I was put in a Speech & Drama class for people who were struggling with school. When I was 9, I got a teacher who suddenly got me. Mrs Rae changed my course. As the foundations set in, things started making sense. I have never been afraid of looking like a Moron. Of asking the dumb questions. Of appearing to try too hard. I regularly get lost in the grass of things I don’t understand, think aloud, and make mistakes in public. We live in a world that rewards false confidence. That thinks those who understand cause and effect are worth putting in charge. The truth, I think, is that no one knows. We are all lost in the grass. The world changes too fast to understand. There is too much noise, and we see whatever we are looking for. The best we can do is choose what we pay attention to. What we give relevance to. What we build meaning from. Slowly.