A few years ago, while driving a newly purchased Volkswagen Passat in the mid of dawn, I was under the influence of a particular rage (of which the reasons elude me – goes to show how fleeting and insignificant most events are). While driving, I almost crashed into a car turning left in front of me when it was clearly my right of way (adding to fuel to my anger – also confirming the thought that everyone is an asshole except me).
Within a span of 2 minutes, another car, also turning left, rushed in front of me; forcing me to hit the breaks when, again, it was my right of way. I recall this car had a massive dent on its side, thinking this sort of reckless driving was a habit of driver #2. As a rational person, I figured, the probability of two independent events occurring together (namely, two idiot drivers, under the lens of ‘seeing red’ corroborated my theory that everyone is an asshole and that driver #2 is a repeat-offender by mere evidence of a large dent). I was right that these disjointed events pointed to a single, over-arching property – but not about them, and most definitely not extending to humanity as a whole.
Only when I stopped, did I realize both my headlights were not working. It was me who caused those near crashes (by extension of our instinct to shift blame, I will add that the Passat is a piece of shit).
This seemingly insignificant event lead to a rather significant introspection on myself as an agent both affected by the system around me, but capable of asserting some influence on it (and myself) as well. The story shows a few things:
- Our emotions painting a narrative to misconstrue the probability of events (add a footnote to every conclusion you make)
- Our logic distorting our understanding of probabilities (the chances of two independent events sharing a particular cause can be a coincidence – random – or caused by an unexpected variable)
- Our self-serving bias limiting our ability for a humble assessment (never take yourself too seriously)
- The ability to truly override our biases when we step outside of our framework to see things rationally (and some of the inherent limitations – and even drawbacks in constantly doing so; emotions/instinct are still beneficial algorithms)
- A singular span of events can be generalized to non-domain-specific wisdom (with a healthy number of caveats). The inverse of the hermetic aphorism, As Above, So Below
Only when we are cognizant of both our environment, and ourselves as a biased and fallible spectator of events, can we recursively improve our objectivity on truth (again, with fundamental limitations on how far we can get). Just as important science is as a means to derive truth, we have to be aware of the gaps in its axioms (inductionism, for example) that disallow to be all-encompassing. Likewise, at an individual level, the interplay of our experience, emotions and logic have to be constantly have to be adjusted to better allow us to navigate a seemingly paradoxical world.
This blog is an attempt to codify my experience and thoughts. For when you write something out, rather than constantly consume information, you grant yourself the opportunity to consolidate and refine your thoughts, as well as have a tangible sample to scrutinize.
These posts will have no order, nor a singly confined topic. Its purpose would be create a series of thoughts that eventually form a web of varied ideas, ideally spanning a breadth in reflection of how vast and complex the human experience really is. My hopes are to revise previous posts to hyper-link their connection to truly delineate the connectedness of the ideas.
To avoid artificially constraining my thoughts, the title will follow the content, rather than the inverse – to avoid the problem, rampant in academia, of imposing arbitrary constraints on creative subjects. Similarly, I won’t confine myself to any sort of specialty as the world doesn’t really grant such luxuries.
My intentions are to form a meditation, akin to Marcus Aurelius’s diary, for myself, in exploration of multiple things – organizing the dynamics of complex systems (psychology, markets, biological systems, myself, etc), understanding probability and developing heuristics as a function of improving my life (best practices; probabilities rooted in experience) , making money (so long as it doesn’t conflict with the other pursuits), and understanding the philosophical underpinnings and truths of everyday life (my understanding of philosophy and science).
Rather than thinking for the sake of thinking, or writing for the sake of writing (both of which can be effectively described as mental masturbation) I am doing it for entirely selfish reasons – namely, to improve my life. For those interested in my journey, and think they can also get something of value from it, feel free to follow as I try to find my voice.