Weekly I/O: What are the three most important decisions, There's no essence, Best interview question
#78: Three Important Decisions, Family Resemblance, Peter Thiel's Interview Question, Opposite of Knowledge, To Know and Not To Do
Hi friends,
Greetings from San Francisco!
Here's your weekly dose of I/O. I hope you enjoy it!
Input
Here's a list of what I'm exploring and pondering on this week.
1. Three most important decisions to think consciously about: the place to live, the work to do, and the people to spend time with.
Thought
Our ancient friend Plato argued that our lives go wrong usually because we don't give ourselves enough time to think carefully and logically enough about our plans.
I think there are three most important decisions that people oftentimes don't give enough time to think about: the place to live, the work to do, and the people to spend time with.
Think about how we made these decisions in the past and how those decisions influenced us. Don't get me wrong. It's not that we are making these decisions haphazardly by throwing darts. However, given how largely these decisions shape our lives, we should always give more time to think consciously and research accordingly.
People often don't think consciously enough because they tend to make decisions that fit their history, sometimes without even realizing the need for careful consideration. For example, we live in this city because that's where I grew up. We hang out with certain friends because we share the same memories in high school. We settled at this job simply because of our college major, and the company was the first to offer me a decent position.
Certainly, these decisions can all be justified because they "make sense." However, perhaps there are other options that we are just not aware of. If we think consciously enough about what we want and what risk we are willing to take, there can be options that fit us more. We must make decisions that fit our future, not just our history.
This is also related to three ways to change.
2. Family Resemblance: Things are defined by overlapping similarities, not a single common essence, much like traits in a family.
We (and early Western philosophy) often think everything has an essence. Similar to Essentialism or Plato's idealism, we believed that, for any object, there must be a set of essential features that all members of that category share. The more precise we can define the essence, the closer we are to the truth.
However, how do you define terms like "Game"? More specifically, what's a characteristic common to all games? Competitiveness? Basketball games are competitive, but make-believe plays aren't. Involve physical activity? Board games don't seem to fit. Require skills? There's no skill required for kids to play in the sandbox. Although we can't find one thing all games share, we still recognize games as games.
Ludwig Wittgenstein argues that, instead of a common essence, things may be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no feature is common to all things. Wittgenstein called this family resemblances, where we categorize stuff like how we recognize family members. Some family members may share the same eye color, and some may share the same temperament, but we can't find the same set of features that everyone has.
Therefore, we shouldn't pursue the ultimate essence of things as the way to get closer to the truth because the members of a conceptual category (like games) may share overlapping similarities without all having the same features.
3. Peter Thiel's interview question: What very important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Book: Zero to One
In the book, Thiel mentioned the question he likes to ask when interviewing others: What very important truth do very few people agree with you on?
This straightforward question is challenging in two aspects. Intellectually, you need critical thinking to have insight against the knowledge everyone is taught in school and, by definition, agreed upon. Psychologically, you need courage to say something that might be unpopular.
He thinks typical answers like "Our educational system is broken," "America is exceptional," and "There is no God" are bad because many people already agree with them. A good answer should take the form of "Most people believe in x, but the truth is the opposite of x."
Here is his answer to his own question:
"My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more. Without technological change, if China doubles its energy production over the next two decades, it will also double its air pollution. If every one of India's hundreds of millions of households were to live the way Americans already do— using only today's tools— the result would be environmentally catastrophic. Spreading old ways to create wealth around the world will result in devastation, not riches. In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable."
What's your answer? Welcome to trade with me.
4. The opposite of knowledge is the illusion of knowledge. The opposite of you know something is you thought you know something, not you don't know something.
Thought
I recently realized this random thought when I was coding. When solving software development problems, I usually got stuck the longest due to not the things I didn't know but the things I thought I knew (but I don't). Things I don't know that I don't know are usually the biggest blockers in my debugging process.
Similarly, I think most of the huge irreversible mistakes are not caused by not knowing something but caused by the illusion of understanding. We are more cautious when we are aware of what we don't know. Knowing the boundaries of what we don't know caps the downside.
This also reminds me of The Opposite of Happiness and Love.
5. "To know and not to do is not to know." - Wang Yang Ming
Quote
This reminds me of a line from the fantastic book The War of Art: "Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance" and the Action-Thought Alignment quote from Freya Stark.
Photo of the Week
That's it. Thanks for reading. Please share which input you found the most helpful or intriguing. Just reply to this email with a number—it's quick and easy!
And as always, feel free to send me any interesting ideas you came across recently!
Looking forward to learning from you.
Cheers,
Cheng-Wei