Saturday Serendipity
Quote, Clear thinking, Interesting find.
Hi.
Reading time: About 5 minutes
Quote
"Clarity isn't about knowing what you want to do with your life, it's about knowing what you want to do this week.You don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to know your next step."- James Clear
Clear Thinking
“The psychological and philosophical quest for clarity amid a world steeped in uncertainty is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon driven by both intrinsic human needs and intellectual pursuits.” - WIGO shots by Prashant Patel.
While reading the book Clear thinking by Shane Parrish I was even more intrigued by the biases that I had written about before.
In the book he explores how these defaults that we have, such as the ego default, the social proof default, the emotion default and the inertia default can have adverse effects on our lives. He has an interesting way of articulating biases. He says that these defaults are the way we have programmed through evolution. When you touch a hot stove your hand immediately moves. You did not think about it. It just happens. Your body reacts automatically. The same thing happens with these defaults. When you are angry you tend to do things that you end up regretting later. In the moment it seems ordinary but it can have adverse effects.It’s the way we have been programmed.
“While we can’t eliminate our defaults, we can reprogram them.” - Shane Parrish , Clear thinking
He speaks about inertia, social proof, envy, ego, anger, etc. when speaking about the defaults.
Reading this made me think about a few other things as well.
Paras Chopra wrote on clear thinking,
I love thinking about thinking. Give me a research paper on rationality, cognitive biases or mental models, and I’ll gobble it up. Given the amount of knowledge I’ve ingested on these topics, I had always assumed that I’m a clear thinker.
Recently, though, it hit me like a lightning strike that this belief is counter-productive. That’s because. After all, if you are convinced that you think clearly by default, why would you put in any extra effort to scrutinize your thought process?
So, ironically, the belief that you’re a clear thinker creates a backdoor for cognitive biases to creep into your thinking because you’re less likely to suspect they might be there in the first place.
Once this realization dawned upon me, I resolved to lower the expectations from my thinking process. Instead of celebrating clever arguments and things making perfect sense, I now see clarity as signs of missing something. The real world is often nuanced and, hence, thinking about it should lead to messy details, not grand one-line aphorisms
This is spot on. When you read so much about clear thinking and becoming a rational human the end result usually is not you becoming rational but you thinking you are rational.
Daniel Kahneman who wrote a lot of academic studies on behavioral economics and was the pioneer knew almost all the biases we face. Yet he fell prey.
“Early in his career, he was part of a group tasked with writing a new academic textbook. As a group, they debated how long it will take them to finish the book, and they converged on an estimate of two years. Guess how long this group actually took to finish it? Eight years. Guess how long does an average academic book takes to be finished? Six years! (And many never get finished at all due to abandonment).
I find this story illuminating because Daniel Kahneman (of all people) should have known better. But he himself told this story as an example of how inside-view misleads by making everything looks rosy. In our head, everything makes perfect sense. When we sign up for the gym, it is as clear as day-light that all we have to do is to get up and go to the gym every day. What we’re unable to incorporate is the messy reality, the thousand little obstacles, distractions or new opportunities that crop up along the way (extra work from the office, laziness, a new hobby, or a health crisis).” - Paras Chopra
This is what I find to be really intriguing. No matter how smart or emotionally intelligent you are. You can never truly escape being irrational a few times. All you can do is reduce the amount of times you are irrational.
So the aim of any post on clear thinking is simply a means of making your life a little bit less messy. Being aware of these biases and thinking you know it all is probably the worst thing you can do.
“Even as we are drawn to clarity, there is a growing recognition of the importance of embracing uncertainty and ambiguity.”- Wigo Shots by Prashant Patel
We have to acknowledge that we might not know a lot of things while making decisions and be open to the possibility that we are acting irrational because if you don’t ask yourself; What am I missing? You will ignore a lot of things you should not be ignoring.
As Paras Chopra says we should be messy thinkers. The aim is simply to make decisions which are a little bit better than what the majority make.
Interesting find
That’s it.
Thank you,
Samvit.