The Rational Optimists takes a look back at our history (in a similar way Steven Pinker does in The Better Angels of Our Nature/Enlightenment Now). And it looks forward at the progress we can be making. The main argument is that we are always progressing/changing/improving. The main cause is specialisation and exchange (that go hand in hand). What many pundits forget is that this process hasn’t stopped and by some accounts will only increase (exponentially, think Ray Kurzweil). Highly recommended book.
Progress – in the future
What I find most striking about the book is the (very obvious) observation that we’ve been making progress for thousands of years (which are explained in the book), and that we will continue to do so.
Yet most people in the news/world expect a static world, one where progress/innovation is not possible. On one hand, I can imagine this, we don’t see progress on a day-to-day basis. But even looking back 10 or 20 years, we’ve made so many strides forwards.
Are we happier? We don’t think about it that much, but we are much happier. And even when happiness stalls (West-Europe, America), we have better and better living conditions and medical care than ever before.
A person in 1950 couldn’t imagine the world of 2019, in the same way we can’t imagine what we will be doing in 2100. All we can know is that through bottom-up innovation (through specialisation and exchange) we will do great new things. We might go to the moon and beyond, we might live forever, we might have abundant energy (e.g. through fission).
Yes, we do need to worry about the problems that we’re creating. But in the last chapter Ridley lays out how we’ve exaggerated many of those claims, and again forgot about the progress that we’re making.
The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin is a great book on how to achieve peak performance. It mixes together his personal journey in chess and push hands with frameworks he discovered during his life. In my summary below, I will pick apart the principles and see how I can apply them in my own life. The main question I have is how to apply these things that are applied to the relative or very short timeframe, with learning and performing over longer periods of time without those competition moments.
Incremental Learning
Josh argues that there are two ways of learning. The first is the entity theorists (fixed mindset). The second is the incremental theorists (learning, hard work).
I think most people are aware that we can learn new things (just think back to when you were a baby). Yet that many also think that we can’t become better at many things we do (e.g. chess, tennis, baking).
He argues that the incremental learning approach (of course) is better. And that you can always learn more, especially with the techniques listed below.
Simplify
In chess, Josh applied the simplification by starting with the endgame. This meant he only had to deal with 2-3 pieces on the board. He then also practised with other pieces alone, to get a deep understanding of how they work. This in contrast to learning everything about chess with a full board.
Personally, I see the application of this in many things. One example is learning weightlifting. The Snatch, for instance, is quite the complex movement, but if you focus on one part each time or break it up during warm-up, you learn over time to do the whole movement better and better.
Layering
From this simplified version, can you add extra layers of complexity? Here Josh mentions how he builds up chess positions or tai chi movements again to their full form. Each time with a deep, intuitive, understanding of the layer(s) below.
I guess I already touched upon this a bit with the simplifying example. I can also see this work in business. With Queal we started with just one product, then added flavours, variations, other products, dashboard, etc. Each time building upon the foundations of the layer before.
Making Smaller Circles
A duality or mix of both simplification and layering is ‘making smaller circles’. Here Josh means that you can have an expert understanding of a move or position, but make it even smaller than before.
An example he uses is that of ‘controlling the centre’. Grandmasters in chess can apply this at other places on the board too. For push hands, it means making your moves smaller and smaller so that can outwith your opponent (imagine a boxer’s left hook versus a drunk swinging his arm around).
For myself, I can imagine this applying to the techniques in the Snatch. Or to better understand what entrepreneurial things to work on (versus not). But I don’t have the best example/understanding here yet.
Lose Yourself
Losing yourself touches upon that deep/intuitive understanding of a topic and executing at ‘superhuman’ speeds/levels. I understand it as being able to connect things without having to deliberate about it (using your prefrontal cortex, or ‘talking’ to yourself).
It reminds me of Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
I’ve experienced flow (as described in the book) sometimes but not very often. I think you can apply it to entrepreneurship, but here you also need a lot of research, doing excel, and meetings. Not always the best for flow.
Examples/Coaching
You need a coach (see Triggers). A coach can help you see what is the right way to do something. And together with a coach you can improve faster than if you’re doing it on your own.
I’ve seen this both at Queal and with weightlifting. It’s hard work and sometimes not too much fun, but a coach does really help you learn quicker. Of course, do find someone who can match your learning style and knows how to get the most out of you.
Constraints
At our office we have a ‘game’ in which you are give certain constraints and then have to apply that to your idea. It can help idea new ways of solving the problem, find costs saving, find what the core of an idea is.
Josh mentions that he couldn’t use one of his hands in the lead-up to a tournament, so he had to learn how to defend his body (and attack the other) with just one hand. This led to many creative insights and a technique that was harder to combat by his opponents.
I also remember a story of Toyota (true or not), that they don’t allow debt within each division, which triggers each one of them to think of the best way to make what they need in the most efficient way possible (the company has enough money/ability to borrow, so it’s a voluntary constraint).
Opponents
Find the biggest guy in the room, pick a fight. Ok, that is not exactly how Josh described it, but having good opponents is key. It’s someone (or another company) from which you can learn, someone who has something to teach you.
At Queal, we learn from moves that other companies make. And that includes opponents, but also others outside our space (I don’t remember if he mentions this much, but I think you can learn a lot from other disciplines).
Losing to Win
When you’re facing a bigger/better/faster opponent, be prepared to lose. Here Josh argues that you should check your ego at the door. Don’t be disheartened by loss, but learn how to extract lessons from it.
In the world of business, I think a good example is sales people. Some go home and worry, others see what 1% did go well and try to make that 2%. The most difficult thing here (for me) is to know what is information/signal from all the noise. If our sales go down, can we learn what to do better, or was it just random fluctuations?
Losing to win is definitely something where a coach is very helpful.
Pause to Accelerate
If you keep throwing yourself at something, you may get a breakthrough. More likely you will burn out. So pause once every while and recover (even recover in between sets, or when working 8 hours). And on a large scale, take a summer break and come back with new ideas.
In this fast-paced world, I think this is a great principle to adhere to and something I hold dear. I can’t keep on working and working (maybe unless in the flow for a few hours) and taking a step back is, in many cases, the best thing to do.
Find the Zone
Many people can’t do good work at home. Too many distractions, too many patterns that you trigger that aren’t related to work (doing dishes, tv around, hi neighbour). Josh has found that you should always trigger yourself to find ‘the zone’.
The trigger could be a mediation, a jog outside, your favourite song (a combination of these and more). If you do this every time before you want to do your best work, then eventually this can become the thing that gets you to do your best work.
Josh also combines this with another one of the skills, making smaller circles. What if you don’t have time now for the 15-minute meditation? Try and (over multiple sessions) make the meditation shorter and shorter. So that when there is a situation when you can’t do the full ritual, you can still get in the zone.
His personal example of this smaller circle was a breath. Before he got on the mat to do push hands, just one breath could centre him.
Making Sandals
If you’re walking on glass, you can be angry and pained. Or you can make sandals. Here Josh argues that you can use your passion/anger as fuel to build something better. Is the other guy cheating, don’t break out in a fit, show the a-hole that you’re better than him.
Another way of looking at this is sandals vs not taking the path at all. In our world, we face many problems and we can’t solve everything, but that doesn’t mean we should close our eyes. I personally try and be very rational and see where we could have the biggest impact (e.g. malaria).
Be Unique
At the highest level, everyone is technically adept. Here you need to distinguish yourself by bringing everything you’ve learned, by being unique. That is the thing that others can’t replicate. And the way you might become push hands champion or a chess grandmaster.
Applying this to my own life
During this review I’ve tried to find some examples where I’m applying the techniques/lessons to my own life. I see several places where it could be useful and one thing that it reminds me of is another term: deliberate practice. Not just going through the motions, but being in the presence/zone and actively learning how to do something better.
Weightlifting is what comes to mind, but how to do my work at Queal, how to eat right, and how to do all other things in life, are all places where I can apply some of the lessons above. Again, a recommended book that teaches some great lessons.
This is one very interesting story. Think Wolf of Wall Street, in the year 2010, with bigger parties, more money, and one of the companies financed by this Wolf/Whale, is the production company that made Wolf of Wall Street. It’s graft, corruption and the lack of a moral compass on the largest of scales. Well written and just crazy to contemplate.
It also showcases how many people are willing to look the other way. Is it trust (and I guess that we need that, trade is built on trust)? Or is it greed (which, in a way, also built trade)?
The book also makes me think of America at the moment, is it not also there that money and power from business (and not even good businesses in case of the president) buy you political power? How come that the system (checks and balances) is not working any more?
I have no direct answers at the moment, and who knows it’s also a glass half full thing (that it’s happening less and this is just an exception). I do recommend the book, if it’s just for how crazy it is.
“The dust had yet to settle on the global financial crisis in 2009 when an unlikely Wharton grad set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude–one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. The nuts and bolts of the scheme were shockingly simple: A young, big-talking, huckster persuaded the Prime Minister of Malaysia to create an investment fund that he would direct from the shadows, raised more than ten billion dollars from global investors with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, and over the next half decade siphoned off no less than $5 billion: money used to finance elections; to purchase luxury real estate in London, New York, and Los Angeles; to produce Hollywood films, including The Wolf of Wall Street–and to throw champagne-drenched parties around the world. Low’s largesse also won him friendships with Hollywood actors, Victoria’s Secret models, and even with a member of President Obama’s inner circle. More staggering still, no one seemed to notice–not the global banks, such as Goldman and J.P. Morgan, who turned a blind eye to shady transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars; and not the international auditors, central bankers, and official financial-system watchdogs.At the center of this fraud was Jho Low–a character so preposterous he seems made up. Federal agents who helped unravel Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme say the Jho Low affair, when its full contours become known, will become a textbook case for tracking transnational fraud in the modern age.”
The topic for this event was Global Health x Effective Altruism: Priorities, Misconceptions, Action!
During the evening we discussed what was happening in in Global Health and how looking through an Effective Altruism (EA) lens we could find out how we could do the most good. After a presentation by the team members of EA Rotterdam we engaged in a round-table discussion.
Here are the presentation, questions, reading materials, and my personal summary of the event.
We (the organisers of EA Rotterdam) thank Alex from V2_ (our venue for the night) for hosting us.
If you want to visit an EA Rotterdam event, visit our Meetup page.
Presentation
We started the evening with a presentation by Laurin, Joeri and Christiaan. They respectively introduced EA, what things are happening in Global Health (and which misconceptions we might still have), and a bit of critique on where to focus (why not mental health?).
At the end of the presentation, Floris (me) laid some factors to think about. This included the outcomes, different causes and criteria for measuring them (download the questions).
Round-table Discussion
We talked about the difficulty of comparing different charities and outcomes, even within the field of Global Health. Would it be better for 100 people to go from a happiness/life-satisfaction score of 5 to 8 (300 ‘points’) or to save 10 lives which will have a score of 6 (60 ‘points’). Some (total utilitarians) would argue for the former, others might have an instinctual feeling we need to focus on the latter.
Related was the topic of saving versus improving lives. One could argue that malaria bednets mainly focus on saving lives. Yet at the same time they also improve the lives of many. They prevent suffering for parents and children. They prevent someone from being ill many times over. They improve economic and societal outcomes.
We asked if you could compare happiness and suffering. We quickly realised that they are not two sides of the same coin. In many cases, we prefer to prevent suffering over adding the same (if it can be compared) happiness. See more on happiness in the Stanford Encyclopedia.
The group discussed many more topics and I recommend that you use the questions to start your own conversation (why not one at the dinner table).
Conclusion
It was another great evening that we got to host at V2_. We can’t thank Alex enough for hosting us there and for everyone who was at the event. We hope to see you at one of the next ones:
This was part 2 in a 3 part series in the Bobiverse. See my short analysis of part 1 here. And I think I should skip this one and do the final analysis when part 3 is here (because again there are many storylines that are just wide open).
The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker takes a critical look at our human brain and argues that it’s NOT a blank slate. Pinker (also known from The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now), combines his skills of storytelling and deep (and wide) knowledge to put down a convincing argument for how the brain/mind? interacts with our environment.
Here is a short summary from the book:
One of the world’s leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colourings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for axe-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgement of human nature based on science and common sense.
Here is the table of contents:
pt. 1. The blank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine
The official theory
Silly putty
The last wall to fall
Culture vultures
The slate’s last stand
pt. 2. Fear and loathing
Political scientists
The holy trinity
pt. 3. Human nature with a human face
The fear of inequality
The fear of imperfectibility
The fear of determinism
The fear of nihilism
pt 4. Know thyself
In touch with reality
Out of our depths
The many roots of our suffering
The sanctimonious animal
pt. 5. Hot buttons
Politics
Violence
Gender
Children
The arts
pt. 6. The voice of the species
The chapter I want to highlight/make some observations about is the one on children. It is this chapter where I was most surprised by the evidence.
In psychology (what I studied) you learn about the 50/50ish division between genes and environment (nature vs nurture) and of course that there are interactions between both.
An example would be your length. Your genetic make-up determines for the most part how tall you will become. But if you’re malnourished whilst growing up, you will come up a few centimetres short in the end.
Or think of your temperament. You may be a stoic, or a hot head. And during the years of your life you will learn to deal with how you’re wired. And some do better than others. They learn better techniques, or they might be unlucky in their childhood.
And this is where Pinker, armed with data, made me think about things a bit different than before. He argues that your family and all the experiences shaped by your parents (the ‘shared’ experiences you could have had with siblings) don’t matter at all. And they don’t matter for the variance of outcomes you will have.
I.e. if we’re looking at your expression of your temperament or the chance that you will end up in jail, then it’s explained for about 50% by your genes, and 50% by your unique experiences.
Unique experiences? The friends you have and smoked weed with when you were still 15. The tv shows you watched in your bedroom. The teacher who took you under his wing. All things that are (almost) completely outside of the control of your parents.
But, but… parents should have an influence, right? I also can’t shake the feeling that what a parent does should have an influence. But when looking at (identical) twins who grew up in different families, or looking at different families in similar circumstances, and many other configurations, Pinker concludes that the shared experiences really count for nothing.
Looking at this in another way, you can say that there may just be many more (influential) unique experiences. Say for instance that your experience of sex(uality) should be formed by different factors. There are of course the genes. But what would have more influence, parents telling you about the birds and the bees, versus your first good/bad/average very intimate evening. Or the stories your peer group tell you. And the expectation that may differ from class to class, from peer group to peer group.
What if you can still shape this environment? As a parent can’t you choose where your kid grows up and influence it in this way? I guess that may still be true. Still, you’re only marginally improving the environment (which accounts for 50%) with still so much variation of unique experiences.
Say you choose the best school, but because your kid is now surrounded by other kids who are smarter he becomes very insecure and gets bullied. Or you move to the countryside because you believe it’s safer and he gets hit by a car in the middle of nowhere.
Ok, enough rambling, Pinker does end the chapter in a good way. You can see your kids not as a blank slate you need to shape and fill. No, see your kids as your friends. As (little) people you want to hang out with. To enjoy your time together (they have half your genes, so you might get along great). And yes, don’t be a bad parent, why would you want to even consider that. Be a good parent just because (and not for their outcomes) it’s the moral thing to do.
