Notes

But when you don’t know how to reason, you don’t know how to evolve or adapt

How do I know how to reason? I think I can reason? The act of doing so is reasoning. Is reasoning learned? or applied and learned?

reasoning amateur, going it alone usually ends with you finding another dogma lifeboat to jump onto—another rulebook to follow and another authority to obe

in a sense if were to take this kind of writing at face value and not doing my own thinking.

code your own software, so you install someone else’s.

NPM for thinking.

The tribe member’s identity is determined by whatever the tribe’s dogma happens to say

IN a sense you inherited your identity from the tribe.

Insecurity can be solved the hard way or the easy way—and by giving people the easy option, dogmatic tribes remove the pressure to do the hard work of evolving into a more independent person with a more internally-defined identity. In that way, dogmatic tribes are an enabler of the blind tribe member’s deficiencies.

The words “cook” and “chef” seem kind of like synonyms. And in the real world, they’re often used interchangeably. But in this post, when I say chef, I don’t mean any ordinary chef. I mean the trailblazing chef—the kind of chef who invents recipes. And for our purposes, everyone else who enters a kitchen—all those who follow recipes—is a cook.

But in life—when it comes to the reasoning “recipes” we use to churn out a decision—we may want to think twice about where we are on the cook-chef spectrum.

As an experiment, as I read this, I would be a cook who is installing the package of how to think independently. To be a chef, I must this as one of my raw ingredients.

So he needs to get a hold of a recipe from another authority he trusts with this type of thing. Once the cook finds the right recipe, he can put it in his catalog and use it for all future decisions on this matter.

A lot of what I am doing right now.

For cooks, even the more innovative kind, there’s almost always a ceiling on the size of the splash they can make in the world, unless there’s some serious luck involved. Chefs aren’t guaranteed to do anything good, but when there’s a little talent and a lot of persistence, they’re almost certain to make a splash.

Being a chef isn’t being like Elon Musk—it’s being yourself.

Naval also talks about this

Which is both A) overrating Musk and B) overrating ourselves. And completely missing the real story.

It’s like a bunch of typewriters looking at a computer and saying, “Man, that is one talented typewriter.”

And if we can’t even see the hardware/software distinction, we certainly can’t see the more nuanced chef software vs. cook software distinction.

Which is why he builds up to this very well.

We mistake the chef’s accurate understanding of risk for courage.

Courage means doing something risky. Risk means exposing yourself to danger. We intuitively understand this—that’s why most of us wouldn’t call child Elon courageous for sleeping with the lights off. Courage would be a weird word to use there because no actual danger was involved.

People believe thinking outside the box takes intelligence and creativity, but it’s mostly about independence. When you simply ignore the box and build your reasoning from scratch, whether you’re brilliant or not, you end up with a unique conclusion—one that may or may not fall within the box.

heir first principles reasoning led them to believe that John Locke had a better plan and they worked their way up from there.

Who is John Locke? why is he important here.

Which is why the real story here isn’t Musk. It’s us.

why Elon Musk is so rare.

It’s not in our DNA to be chefs because human self-preservation never depended upon independent thinking—

Thinking like cooks is what we’re born to do because what we’re born to do is survive.

primary purpose is already taken care of,

Eat and Live

It’s an unfortunate catch-22—we continue to think like cooks because we can’t absorb the epiphany that we live in an anomaly world where there’s no need to be cooks, and we can’t absorb that epiphany because we think like cooks and cooks don’t know how to challenge and update their own software. This is the vicious cycle of our time—and the secret of the chef is that they somehow snapped out of it.

You don’t know shit.

Socrates

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

“I don’t know shit”

less wrong

An entire community around it. Farnam street

But that’s not a great life model when it comes to brain software, and it usually leads to us making the same mistakes and living with the same results year after year after year, b

yeah me rn

To do the same with our thinking, we need to revert to our four-year-old selves and start deconstructing our software by resuming the Why game our parents and teachers shut down decades ago. It’s time to roll up our sleeves, pop open the hood, and get our hands dirty with a bunch of not-that-fun questions about what we truly want, what’s truly possible, and whether the way we’re living our lives follows logically from those things.

When there’s proof-level certainty, it means either there’s some serious concrete and verified data underneath it—or it’s faith-based dogma. Maybe you feel certain that quitting your job would be a disaster or certain that there’s no god or certain that it’s important to go to college or certain that you’ve always had a great time on rugged vacations or certain that everyone loves it when you break out the guitar during a group hangout—but if it’s not well backed-up by data from what you’ve learned and experienced, it’s at best a hypothesis and at worst a completely false piece of dogma.

“This doesn’t seem right to me but everyone else says it’s right so it must be right and I’ll just pretend I also think it’s right so no one realizes I’m stupid”

When you grow up, you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

This is a battle of two kinds of confidence—confidence in others vs. confidence in ourselves. For most cooks, confidence in others usually comes out the winner.

Not respecting society is totally counterintuitive to what we’re taught when we grow up—but it makes perfect sense if you just look at what your eyes and experience tell you.

And yet, the delusion that society knows shit that you don’t runs deep, and still, somewhere in the back of your head, you don’t think it’s realistic that you could ever actually build that company, achieve that fabulous wealth or celebrity-status, create that TV show, win that senate campaign—no matter what it seems like.

Epiphany 3) You’re playing Grand Theft Life

But to me, Self-Loathing Cook is the most curious one of the four. Self-Loathing Cook gets it. He knows what the chefs know. He’s tantalizingly close to carving out his own chef path in the world, and he knows that if he just goes for it, good things would happen. But he can’t pull the trigger. He built himself a pair of wings he feels confident work just fine, but he can’t bring himself to jump off the cliff.

Me rn?

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. —Henry Ford Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. —Winston Churchill13 I have not failed 700 times. I’ve succeeded in proving 700 ways how not to build a lightbulb. —Thomas Edison

Misconception 1: Misplaced Fear

fe, but he’s actually in the grasp of dogma’s slickest trick.

something that hurts the chance that your genes will move on—i.e., danger = not mating or dying or your kids dying, and that’s about it.

We’re more afraid of public speaking than texting on the highway, more afraid of approaching an attractive stranger in a bar than marrying the wrong person, more afraid of not being able to afford the same lifestyle as our friends than spending 50 years in meaningless career—all because embarrassment, rejection, and not fitting in really sucked for hunters and gatherers

he Chef Lab is where all the action is and where the path to many people’s dreams lies—dreams about their career, about love, about adventure.

The second major problem for Self-Loathing Cook is that, like all cooks, he can’t wrap his head around the fact that he’s the scientist in the lab—not the experiment.

conscious tribe members reach conclusions, while blind tribe members are conclusions. And what you believe, what you stand for, and what you choose to do each day are conclusions that you’ve drawn. In some cases, very, very publicly.

But when you are the experiment, negative feedback isn’t a piece of new, helpful information—it’s an insult. And it hurts. And it makes you mad. And because changing feels impossible, there’s not much good that feedback can do anyway—it’s like giving parents negative feedback on the name of their one-month-old child.

they were “trapped in their own history.”

Being trapped in your history means you don’t know how to change, you’ve forgotten how to innovate, and you’re stuck in the identity box the world has put you in. And you end up being the cancer researcher we mentioned who only tries likely-to-succeed experimentation within the comfort zone he knows best.

something bold or unusual—is the baggage of his own identity part of what’s holding him back?

These are the reasons I believe so many of the world’s most able people are stuck in life as Self-Loathing Cook, one epiphany short of the promised land.

The challenge with this last epiphany is to somehow figure out a way to lose respect for your own fear.

ith the only rules being that you can’t break the law or harm anyone, and you still have to make sure to support your and your family’s basic needs—what would you do? My guess is that most people would do all kinds of things they’d love to do in their real life but wouldn’t dare to try, and that by behaving that way, they’d end up quickly getting a life going in the simulation that’s both far more successful and much truer to themselves than the real life they’re currently living. Removing the fear and the concern with identity or the opinions of others would thrust the person into the not-actually-risky Chef Lab and have them bouncing around all the exhilarating places outside their comfort zone—and their lives would take off. That’s the life irrational fears block us from.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish

fearlessness.

If we want to improve ourselves and move our way closer to the chef side of the spectrum, we have to remember to remember. We have to remember that we have software, not just hardware. We have to remember that reasoning is a skill and like any skill, you get better at it if you work on it. And we have to remember the cook/chef distinction, so we can notice when we’re being like one or the other.

"Life is short, art long."

When great and kinglike riches fall into the hands of a bad master, they are dispersed straightway, but even a moderate fortune, when bestowed upon a wise guardian, increases by use: and in like manner our life has great opportunities for one who knows how to dispose of it to the best advantage.

haughtiness

No one lets anyone seize his estates, and if a trivial dispute arises about boundary lines, there's a rush to stones and arms; but people let others trespass on their existence-or rather, they go so far as to invite in those who'll take possession of their lives

You're like ordinary mortals in fearing everything, you're like immortals in coveting everything.

Are you not ashamed to keep for yourself only the remnants of your existence, and to allocate to philosophical thought only that portion of time which can't be applied to any business?

But needless to say, the sage will never resort to such an abject term. He will never be half-free but will always enjoy complete and unalloyed liberty. Not subject to any constraints, he will be his own master and tower above all others. For what can there be above the man who rises above fortune?

but all of them sin in a more manly fashion

But learning how to live takes a whole lifetime, and-you'll perhaps be more surprised at this-it takes a whole lifetime to learn how to die.

Believe me, it's the mark of a great man, and one rising above human weakness, to allow no part of his time to be skimmed off. Accordingly, such a person's life is extremely long because he's kept available for himself the whole of whatever amount of time he had. None of it lay fallow and uncultivated, and none of it was under another's control; for being a most careful guardian of his time, he found nothing worth exchanging for it. And so that man had enough time; but those deprived of much of their life by the public have necessarily had too little.

For suppose you thought that a person had sailed far who'd been caught in a savage storm as soon as he left harbor, and after being carried in this direction and that, was driven in circles over the same course by alternations of the winds raging from different quarters: he didn't have a long voyage, but he was long tossed about.

The greatest impediment to living is expectancy, which relies on tomorrow and wastes today.

You map out what is in fortune's hand but let slip what's in your own hand. What are you aiming at? What's your goal? All that's to come lies in uncertainty: live right now.

Their life therefore disappears into an abyss; and just as it does no good to pour any amount of liquid into a vessel if there's nothing at the bottom to receive and keep it, so it makes no difference how much time we are given if there's nowhere for it to settle, and it's allowed to pass through the cracks and holes in the mind.

Of all people, they alone who give their time to philosophy are at leisure, they alone really live.

Unless we prove most ungrateful, those most distinguished founders of hallowed thoughts came into being for us, and for us they prepared a way of living. We are led by the work of others into the presence of the most beautiful treasures, which have been pulled from darkness and brought to light. From no age are we debarred, we have access to all; and if we want to transcend the narrow limitations of human weakness by our expansiveness of mind, there is a great span of time for us to range over.

e uses it. Time is to come? This he anticipates. The combining of all times into one makes his life long.

And so they move on to some other preoccupation and find all the intervening time burdensome, precisely as they do when a gladiatorial show has been announced for a given day, or when the date of some other show or amusement is keenly awaited, and they want to skip over the days in between. Any postponement of something they look forward to is long to them.

This can be getting bored in the day and have nothing to do. Or it could be that they have a trip they look forward to

(5) All the time while they plunder and are plundered and break in on each other's rest and make each other miserable, life is without profit, without pleasure, without any progress of mind. No one holds death in view, no one refrains from distant hopes. Indeed, some people even make arrangements for things beyond life — huge tomb structures, dedications of public buildings, gladiatorial shows for the funeral, and ostentatious funeral processions. Yet in truth, the funerals of such people should be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as if they'd lived for the briefest span.

I did not read the full thing. I got the first couple of points and then reading any longer was not beneficial to em for some reason

tend to focus on divinity over people, making salvation the end goal instead of self-improvement

I assume here means about gods and worship to them

hilosophy, psychology, art, literature, self-help, etc.—lie more on the periphery, with their work often fragmented from each other

extra-curricular, icing on the life cake.

He is such a profound person. This in fact is a very out of this world kind of statement

a growing human needs a plan—if we want to meaningfully improve, we need to define a goal, understand how to get there, become aware of obstacles in the way, and have a strategy to get past them.

We can’t conceive of what life higher on the staircase would be like, but absorbing the fact that higher stairs exist and trying to view ourselves from the perspective of one of those steps is the key mindset we need to be in for this exercise.

r Higher Being.

WE’RE GOING TO DIE It marked the first time any species on planet Earth was conscious enough to understand that fact, and it threw all of those animals in the brain—who were not built to handle that kind of information—into a complete frenzy, sending the whole ecosystem into chaos:

This would point to one fact that most of the emotions or primal senses are kind of geared or pointing the direction of death. They are lit by the fire of death

the high-minded, love-based, advanced emotions of the Higher Bein

This is what makes us petty and jealous and what makes us so thoroughly enjoy the misfortune of others. It’s what makes us scared, anxious, and insecure. It’s why we’re self-absorbed and narcissistic; vain and greedy; narrow-minded and judgmental; cold, callous, and even cruel. And only on Step 1 do we feel that primitive “us versus them” tribalism that makes us hate people different than us.

self-preservation and the need to reproduce.

It’s like hiring a nutritionist to help you with your exhaustion, and they tell you that the key is to drink an espresso shot anytime you’re tired.

but the fog itself is the source of unhappiness

Huh what? I was only thinking of the fog as the source or the motivations but now its a lot more than that

Step 2 is all about thinning out the fog enough to bring the Higher Being’s thoughts and abilities into your consciousness, allowing you to see behind and around the things that happen in life. Step 2 is about bringing context into your awareness, which reveals a far deeper and more nuanced version of the truth.

What would I do if money were no object?” or “How would I advise someone else on this?” or “Will I regret not having done this when I’m 80?”

Meditation, exercise, yoga, etc.—activities that help quiet the brain’s unconscious chatter, i.e. allowing the fog to settle.

The bad news is that it’s extremely hard to stay on Step 2 for long. The Catch-22 here is that it’s not easy to stay conscious of the fog because the fog makes you unconscious.

A true Whoa moment is hard to come by and even harder to maintain for very long, like our dog’s standing difficulties. Thinking about this level of reality is like looking at an amazing photo of the Grand Canyon; a Whoa moment is like being at the Grand Canyon—the two experiences are similar but somehow vastly different. Facts can be fascinating, but only in a Whoa moment does your brain actually wrap itself around true reality. In a Whoa moment, your brain for a second transcends what it’s been built to do and offers you a brief glimpse into the astonishing truth of our existence. And a Whoa moment is how you get to Step 3.

Sagan said that “science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” In this way, science is the “prophet” of this framework—the one who reveals new truth to us and gives us an opportunity to alter ourselves by accessing it.

ut you know humans—they don’t like that purple blob one bit. Never have. The blob frightens and humiliates humans, and we have a rich history of denying its existence entirely, which is like living on the beach and pretending the ocean isn’t there

So what are we completely incapable of grasping even if a more intelligent species tried its hardest to explain it to us? Probably almost everything.

be humble or be absurd.

I’m still totally atheist when it comes to all human-created conceptions of a divine higher force—which all, in my opinion, proclaim far too much certainty.

But could a super-advanced force exist? It seems more than likely. Could we have been created by something/someone bigger than us or be living as part of a simulation without realizing it? Sure—I’m a three-year-old, remember, so who am I to say no?

To me, complete rational logic tells me to be atheist about all of the Earth’s religions and utterly agnostic about the nature of our existence or the possible existence of a higher being.

The goal of personal growth should be to gain that deathbed clarity while your life is still happening so you can actually do something about it.

Wisdom gives people the insight to know what “fulfilled and meaningful” actually means and the courage to make the choices that will get them there.

One thing I learned at some point is that growing old or growing tall is not the same as growing up.

Being a grownup is about your level of wisdom and the size of your mind’s scope—and it turns out that it doesn’t especially correlate with age. After a certain age, growing up is about overcoming your fog, and that’s about the person, not the age. I know some supremely wise older people, but there are also a lot of people my age who seem much wiser than their parents about a lot of things. Someone on a growth path whose fog thins as they age will become wiser with age, but I find the reverse happens with people who don’t actively grow—the fog hardens around them and they actually become even less conscious, and even more certain about everything, with age.

Their certainty when it comes to history ends up actively pushing their followers away from truth—as evidenced by the 42% of Americans who have been deprived of knowing the truth about evolution.

(An even worse staircase criminal is the loathsome world of American politics, with a culture that lives on Step 1 and where politicians appeal directly to people’s animals, deliberately avoiding anything on Steps 2-4.)

Over time, you want your [Time on Step 2] / [Time on Step 1] ratio to go up a little bit each year, and you want to get better and better at inducing Step 3 Whoa moments and reminding yourself of the Step 4 purple blob. If you do those things, I think you’re evolving in the best possible way, and it will have profound effects on all aspects of your life.

My challenge to you is to decide on a term for yourself that accurately sums up your growth framework.

What’s the goal that you want to evolve towards (and why is that the goal), what does the path look like that gets you there, what’s in your way, and how do you overcome those obstacles? What are your practices on a day-to-day level, and what should your progress look like year-to-year? Most importantly, how do you stay strong and maintain the practice for years and years, not four days? After you’ve thought that through, name the framework and make a symbol or mantra.