Hey Friends,
Hope you are well and in good health.
Strange that we are into October now, in this short-and-long year.
Perhaps fittingly, it has been both a thoughtful and a thoughtless week for me. But that’s another story.
The reads of note listed below have been occupying my thought-room right now.
Beware What Sounds Insightful
Cedric Chin | 11 mins
One effect of the Attention Economy is that writers—or creators in general—have to… well, get people’s attention. One way to do that is to create seemingly insightful things.
the arms race for our attention has led to an arms race in writing. The best online writers are able to make something sound insightful—regardless of whether it’s true, or whether it’s useful.
Creating something truly insightful is difficult. It’s a lot easier to make something sound insightful.
Some ideas sound insightful because they are true. But not all true ideas sound insightful. A true idea that is commonly accepted can sound trite and obvious: we call those clichés. The job of a good writer, then, is to present some truth in a way that doesn’t trip our cliché triggers.
This isn’t something nefarious on part of the creators but more of a reaction to the economic system.
There are a lot of tricks writers can and do employ to this end:
Use a story. Both to appeal to our story-hungry instincts (Re: #12- The Shape of our Stories) and to establish credibility.
Repackage obvious truths and sprinkle them over the course of an essay.
”If a cliché is a truth that is commonly accepted, then an insight is a truth that isn’t widespread. Clichés can thus be repackaged to sound insightful.”Use more sophisticated language than necessary. This can be unnecessary or worse—used to mask something wrong.
Now, it’s not necessarily wrong to use these tricks. They can be used to good effect. Say, to hammer home a useful point. But as readers/consumers—and even as creators—we should be aware that “what sounds insightful and what is useful or true are often not the same thing”.
My Thoughts
This piece had me thinking a lot. And frankly, they were uncomfortable thoughts. First, there is the uneasy feeling that even though I feel like I am looking for + consuming things that are useful or (truly) insightful, I may actually be attracted to things that seem insightful. (Perhaps a case of Productivity Porn).
Second, that it might also relate to things I share in these letters. For sure, they are awesome stuff and I truly believe they are worth sharing. However, for some of the ones that seem to be useful insights, I have the nagging feeling they might just serve as a source of insightful-but-not-used-in-practice ideas. Heck, I feel I myself don’t live (as much as I could) a lot of the ideas I have (re)shared. For instance, haven’t practiced Gratitude and positive dissatisfaction for a while.
I definitely need to reconcile and perhaps even live with this dissonance.
Coming back to the piece, one minor qualm I have is that perhaps at least some (though I suspect a very tiny) part of what makes a piece insightful is the reader/consumer. Something insightful for me—because I hadn’t stumbled on to the idea before—might be cliché to you.
Still, we definitely need to be aware of whether a piece is truly insightful or it is just sounding insightful. We need to think for ourselves.
All in all, an insightful read.
Optimise for Usefulness
Cedric Chin | 15 mins
Another piece by the same author.
When choosing beliefs and ideas, among the many things we could optimize for—ease, simplicity, or even truthiness—we are better off optimizing for usefulness.
if a belief is useful to you in achieving your goals, keep it. Otherwise, discard it. An extension of this is, per Graham, if you have to pick between two theories and one is less useful than the other, pick the more useful one regardless of the truth.
For instance, a Growth Mindset is better than a Fixed Mindset primarily because it is useful—it better helps us grow, learn, and pretty much live a relatively better life.
In fact, this kind of “mindset tweaks” are one of the ways we can optimize of usefulness. We can adopt mindsets that are helpful in whatever goal we are pursuing.
Similarly, we can also discard bad mindsets, the ones holding us back.
Optimizing for usefulness can also be great for finding heuristics. E.g. “debugging ability is indicative of broader programming ability” may not be totally correct but does provide a useful heuristic (say, when designing a programming interview).
Finally, it also means we strive to derive more fleshed out, general lessons from our experiences.
My Thoughts
Although the piece doesn’t directly connect with the first piece above, I think it provides a good solution (sort of) to the problem of being trapped looking for insights. If one optimizes for usefulness—looking at whatever one consumes in that framing—one can avoid falling into the trap of hunting for insightful-sounding or even actually insightful but not useful stuff.
// Videos
The Art of Changing Metaphors
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer | 20 mins
(Thanks to Nish for sharing this amazing talk. See: Bits and Paradoxes—22 :D )
Related to the changing/switching of mindsets based on usefulness, here we change something very related—metaphors!
Metaphors have a huge sway on us. They shape our thinking. But that can be a blessing as it gives us an opportunity to shape something that shapes us!
For instance, the “diseases as enemies we have to battle” metaphor can be useful sometimes (say when we need to rile up ourselves and remain strong) but can other times pit us against our own body. It might be more useful to think of the disease as a teacher teaching us something about our own body and that we have to listen.
Steps to change metaphors if necessary:
Listen. Notice the metaphors in your or someone else's usage. “I’m stagnating”.
Determine whether they are serving you or not. “No, the inactive feeling stresses me a lot more than it should”.
Try on a different metaphor. Could look around and find object, metaphors that might suit oneself. “I’m flowing in the wrong direction. I need to course-correct”.
Optimistic Nihilism
Kurzgesagt | 6 mins
"If our life is the only thing we get to experience, then it’s the only thing that matters. If the universe has no principles, then the only principles relevant are the ones we decide on. If the universe has no purpose, then we get to dictate what its purpose is.”
Framing 1: Nothing matters :(
Framing 2: Nothing matters :)
the world is gonna roll me
vlogbrothers | 4 mins
John and Hank always have a weird calming effect on me (I suspect I am not the only one).
The central tenet of this walk-n-talk that I could pick up: Nature is indifferent to us—not in a monstrously devilish way but perhaps also not in a poetic, beautiful way because well, we are part of nature. Sometimes we forget that.
As Kurzgesagt say in the video:
We are as much the universe as a neutron star, or a black hole, or a nebula. Even better, actually, we are its thinking and feeling part, the sensory organs of the universe.
// Might-be-Useful
How To Be a Programmer
I haven’t gone through all of the topics in here (haha, *nervous laughter*) but seems to be solid including some “non-technical” aspects that are very much integral to programming well.
// Poems and Stories
Paper Menagerie
Ken Liu | 20 mins | Short Story
I’d like to say it’s not as subtle as I would have liked but who am I kidding: I cried a bucket. So, fair warning.
One of those stories that is felt as much as or even more than it is comprehended.
But then again, isn’t that what art is for?
Elena
Pat Mora | 1 min
Succinctly powerful.
// Music
Upbeat. Fun mix of tunes. A storytelling song.
Because one cannot have enough of iron and wine :)
// Wholesome
Closing Thoughts
This section from Obvious things that are easy to ignore struck a chord with me:
In 2004 the New York Times interviewed Stephen Hawking, the late scientist whose incurable motor-neuron disease left him paralyzed and unable to talk since age 21.
“Are you always this cheerful?” the Times asked.
“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21,” Hawking said. “Everything since then has been a bonus,” he replied.
(Reminds me of this anecdote from Bucky Fuller).
Perhaps a useful framing? I am not sure.
But somehow… I feel better thinking of this whole life as a bonus.
With Gratitude,
Bijay
This optimize for usefulenss reminded me of the "Beware of other-optimizing" phenomenon which I have been a victim of. Probably, many can relate to it. I guess that's also going to "thinking for yourself" context.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6NvbSwuSAooQxxf7f/beware-of-other-optimizing