We were the most intelligent animals on the planet for a million years before we evolved language. We use words now to think, or think we think: rationality is made of words.
But the other stuff never went away. And it's probably just as ordered and useful and reliable as rationality, only in different ways and with other targets (a lot of which have to do with interpreting other humans). Language "talks over" that, like a bossy older sister interpreting what her silent little brother "actually means."
Re: #3, maybe you were just lucky? I think the reason this is a common view is that lots of smart people have the experience of thinking they found a $20 bill on the ground, and then were proven wrong (often with bad consequences for themselves). Many people in finance and investing spend whole careers searching for these $20 bills and never find them, for example.
Maybe a synthesis is: it's fine to look for $20 bills lying on the ground, but you should be skeptical if you think you've found one, and make sure you have a plan for landing on your feet if you're wrong, even if you can't find a good reason for why you're wrong. Recognize that acting on such a belief is inherently pretty risky.
“most people really “do everything the way they do anything” — whether that’s in a low-effort or high-effort way.”
What an excellent and true insight, we tend to replicate behavioral patterns across activities and contexts.
“ I don’t have a satisfying theory for why this is, but I know what happens: When I shift from emotional intuition to a logical story about a decision, it’s much easier for my reasoning to get hijacked by plausible-sounding directives that turn out to be nonsense.”
I had a partial answer to this when I read the book Blink by Gladwell… the idea of intuition not being a feeling but a rapid manifestation of past experiences and something you already knew… basically your brain recalls the concept without knowing exactly where it got it from or how to articulate it accurately so it manifests as a ‘feeling’ rather than a thought.
It helps explain why people who have had a lot more experiences tend to have better ‘intuition’ than those that are relatively sheltered.
Re 8 – I'm conflating intuition and "emotion" somewhat here (but I think that's mostly justified/ok), but there are interesting studies that look at patients who have had damage to an emotional center of their brain* and show that they have significantly impaired difficulty making decisions, even very simple ones. There is one somewhat notable case covered in https://www.powells.com/book/descartes-error-emotion-reason-the-human-brain-9780143036227 where a patient named Elliot who had a damaged VMPFC following a surgery to remove a brain tumor, but also had a high IQ, had an incredibly difficult time making the simplest decisions such as:
- deciding what date would be good for a follow up appointment out of two options
- deciding what restaurant to eat at (more so than the "normal" level of indecision)
- deciding what color pen to use for a document
He would try and "logic out" these decisions for startlingly long amounts of time (>30 minutes!), which provides some interesting evidence that emotions may be central to any decision making process, no matter how small.
*In particular, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex or VMPFC, which is the part of the PFC that takes in emotional signals
Aristotle mentioned in his book Nicomachean Ethics that “It seems, as we said, that what is chosen or purposed is willed, but that what is willed is not always chosen or purposed.”
We often will many things. We want health, happiness, wisdom, success, or a better life. But wanting something does not mean we have chosen it in a concrete, actionable way.
Choice (or purpose) only happens when the will passes through reasoning. It requires deliberation about how to act, when, and by what means. Choice is specific and practical. It commits you to an action.
When you make a choice. Make it a reasonable one. You need to commit to it later.
I wonder whether you think there's any tension between #2 and #8? Specifically, I think I'm very prone to the fallacy of #8 as an enneagram type 5 (aka that I can most reliably logic my way through things, and that my gut instincts are unreliable/weak). But when I resist that tendency, I collapse into the opposite end of the spectrum: that chemistry rules me. In other words, "if I do have an intuition/attraction to a person or an idea, I should follow it." When you've written about compatibility/commitment before (tying yourself to the mast), it seems like you sometimes have to override a gut instinct with responsibility or commitment, which can come in the form of logical reasoning. So the question I ask myself a lot--when to do which?
That's the million dollar question! Maybe the way I reconcile this is by using commitments to lock me into following an intuition that will be challenging to follow. Like: I have a gut feeling that this person or project will take me in the right direction as a person, but my head is scared of all of the work, change, compromise, etc, that will entail?
I wrote a piece that included a bit about this - my hypothesis is that you use rationality to say “no”, but you need to use emotion / intuition to say “yes.” Or in a different phrasing - emotions are necessary but insufficient to choose well.
>did forms of exercise I found unfun and injurious
Bit off topic, but have you tried rock climbing? It's super fun, so it requires very little motivation to get yourself there - in fact you usually have the opposite problem, of forcing yourself to take rest days. Every gym will have lots of routes at varying levels of difficulty, so you can always find something that's exactly matched to your skill level, no matter how good you are - hard enough to be a challenge, but still doable with practice.
If you do top rope (style of climbing where you're attached to a rope at the top of the wall), it's very low impact and very safe (if you fall, you fall 2 inches, as long as your belayer wasn't asleep - the belay device will lock the rope on a fall, all they have to do is take in the slack before). Climbing gyms are also just great social environments - it's easy to meet people when you're resting in between climbs (as opposed to a traditional gym where everyone is in their own zone/headphones in).
It's been a life changing hobby with a ton of positive benefits for me, so I'd highly recommend it!
Many popular myths, couched as common sense aphorisms, hide a lot of truth. As you say, they persist because they serve a psychological function - allowing people to avoid the work of change.
"Compatibility is litigated on the timescale of years and decades;" -- that choice of verb is extremely interesting.
I ran all eight of these through my mind system for comparison. To some degree, in all eight, I concur with your revised view. In just over half, I felt your description was better and more complete than mine. More settled. And thus more actionable.
feels like there's an egregore psyop always trying to lure us into the comfortable lie
feels bad that "trust ur intuition" is painfully obvious to most other enneagram types but not all... life really feels isolated and u feel super autistic until u realize you've been playing the game all wrong the whole time
People always think that they're unique, that nobody else is like them. For example, they'll make up some excuse not to see someone instead of just being honest that they're not interested in spending time together, when they're absolutely certain that they can recognise such an excuse when it's used against them.
This applies in regards to Lie #6. Can you think of even a single instance, in your entire life, when you did something for literally no reason? I know I can't, and I imagine others would similarly come up short. Yet people assume that everyone other than them is doing so all the time.
I really appreciated your sharing on no. 2 as a data point that things can still work out despite uncertainties. For whatever reasons, I don't have much data on how people generally do in relationships over time, and I haven't sought it out much myself.
This really resonated with me, especially the idea that the stories we tell ourselves can keep us moving while quietly keeping us from being fully alive — surviving pain doesn’t always make us stronger, sometimes it just makes us guarded, and learning the difference takes time and honesty. I’ve been writing recently about love from that same place, where love isn’t about becoming impenetrable but about staying open without losing yourself, and how the tension between wisdom and vulnerability shapes who we become. If that theme connects with you, I wrote more about it here: https://theeternalnowmm.substack.com/p/eternal-love?r=71z4jh
I also read that Generalist article and that quote was the one I took away. I struggled to apply it to my relationship and have wondered if I was in the right relationship. I love the reframe does person help me get closer to becoming the person I want to be? Thanks for sharing.
We were the most intelligent animals on the planet for a million years before we evolved language. We use words now to think, or think we think: rationality is made of words.
But the other stuff never went away. And it's probably just as ordered and useful and reliable as rationality, only in different ways and with other targets (a lot of which have to do with interpreting other humans). Language "talks over" that, like a bossy older sister interpreting what her silent little brother "actually means."
that is such a great way to frame rational thinking and its limitations!
Fantastic list
Btw, Taleb argues that "what didn't kill you makes you stronger" can be survivorship bias.
Those who survived hardships intact, are usually stronger people. But they might have been even stronger without those travails
Oh yeah, great point!
Re: #3, maybe you were just lucky? I think the reason this is a common view is that lots of smart people have the experience of thinking they found a $20 bill on the ground, and then were proven wrong (often with bad consequences for themselves). Many people in finance and investing spend whole careers searching for these $20 bills and never find them, for example.
Maybe a synthesis is: it's fine to look for $20 bills lying on the ground, but you should be skeptical if you think you've found one, and make sure you have a plan for landing on your feet if you're wrong, even if you can't find a good reason for why you're wrong. Recognize that acting on such a belief is inherently pretty risky.
“most people really “do everything the way they do anything” — whether that’s in a low-effort or high-effort way.”
What an excellent and true insight, we tend to replicate behavioral patterns across activities and contexts.
“ I don’t have a satisfying theory for why this is, but I know what happens: When I shift from emotional intuition to a logical story about a decision, it’s much easier for my reasoning to get hijacked by plausible-sounding directives that turn out to be nonsense.”
I had a partial answer to this when I read the book Blink by Gladwell… the idea of intuition not being a feeling but a rapid manifestation of past experiences and something you already knew… basically your brain recalls the concept without knowing exactly where it got it from or how to articulate it accurately so it manifests as a ‘feeling’ rather than a thought.
It helps explain why people who have had a lot more experiences tend to have better ‘intuition’ than those that are relatively sheltered.
Re 8 – I'm conflating intuition and "emotion" somewhat here (but I think that's mostly justified/ok), but there are interesting studies that look at patients who have had damage to an emotional center of their brain* and show that they have significantly impaired difficulty making decisions, even very simple ones. There is one somewhat notable case covered in https://www.powells.com/book/descartes-error-emotion-reason-the-human-brain-9780143036227 where a patient named Elliot who had a damaged VMPFC following a surgery to remove a brain tumor, but also had a high IQ, had an incredibly difficult time making the simplest decisions such as:
- deciding what date would be good for a follow up appointment out of two options
- deciding what restaurant to eat at (more so than the "normal" level of indecision)
- deciding what color pen to use for a document
He would try and "logic out" these decisions for startlingly long amounts of time (>30 minutes!), which provides some interesting evidence that emotions may be central to any decision making process, no matter how small.
*In particular, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex or VMPFC, which is the part of the PFC that takes in emotional signals
Echo with #5. And echo a lot!!
Aristotle mentioned in his book Nicomachean Ethics that “It seems, as we said, that what is chosen or purposed is willed, but that what is willed is not always chosen or purposed.”
We often will many things. We want health, happiness, wisdom, success, or a better life. But wanting something does not mean we have chosen it in a concrete, actionable way.
Choice (or purpose) only happens when the will passes through reasoning. It requires deliberation about how to act, when, and by what means. Choice is specific and practical. It commits you to an action.
When you make a choice. Make it a reasonable one. You need to commit to it later.
I wonder whether you think there's any tension between #2 and #8? Specifically, I think I'm very prone to the fallacy of #8 as an enneagram type 5 (aka that I can most reliably logic my way through things, and that my gut instincts are unreliable/weak). But when I resist that tendency, I collapse into the opposite end of the spectrum: that chemistry rules me. In other words, "if I do have an intuition/attraction to a person or an idea, I should follow it." When you've written about compatibility/commitment before (tying yourself to the mast), it seems like you sometimes have to override a gut instinct with responsibility or commitment, which can come in the form of logical reasoning. So the question I ask myself a lot--when to do which?
That's the million dollar question! Maybe the way I reconcile this is by using commitments to lock me into following an intuition that will be challenging to follow. Like: I have a gut feeling that this person or project will take me in the right direction as a person, but my head is scared of all of the work, change, compromise, etc, that will entail?
I wrote a piece that included a bit about this - my hypothesis is that you use rationality to say “no”, but you need to use emotion / intuition to say “yes.” Or in a different phrasing - emotions are necessary but insufficient to choose well.
>did forms of exercise I found unfun and injurious
Bit off topic, but have you tried rock climbing? It's super fun, so it requires very little motivation to get yourself there - in fact you usually have the opposite problem, of forcing yourself to take rest days. Every gym will have lots of routes at varying levels of difficulty, so you can always find something that's exactly matched to your skill level, no matter how good you are - hard enough to be a challenge, but still doable with practice.
If you do top rope (style of climbing where you're attached to a rope at the top of the wall), it's very low impact and very safe (if you fall, you fall 2 inches, as long as your belayer wasn't asleep - the belay device will lock the rope on a fall, all they have to do is take in the slack before). Climbing gyms are also just great social environments - it's easy to meet people when you're resting in between climbs (as opposed to a traditional gym where everyone is in their own zone/headphones in).
It's been a life changing hobby with a ton of positive benefits for me, so I'd highly recommend it!
I loved this piece.
Many popular myths, couched as common sense aphorisms, hide a lot of truth. As you say, they persist because they serve a psychological function - allowing people to avoid the work of change.
"Compatibility is litigated on the timescale of years and decades;" -- that choice of verb is extremely interesting.
I ran all eight of these through my mind system for comparison. To some degree, in all eight, I concur with your revised view. In just over half, I felt your description was better and more complete than mine. More settled. And thus more actionable.
Kudos.
i really resonate with each of these points
feels like there's an egregore psyop always trying to lure us into the comfortable lie
feels bad that "trust ur intuition" is painfully obvious to most other enneagram types but not all... life really feels isolated and u feel super autistic until u realize you've been playing the game all wrong the whole time
People always think that they're unique, that nobody else is like them. For example, they'll make up some excuse not to see someone instead of just being honest that they're not interested in spending time together, when they're absolutely certain that they can recognise such an excuse when it's used against them.
This applies in regards to Lie #6. Can you think of even a single instance, in your entire life, when you did something for literally no reason? I know I can't, and I imagine others would similarly come up short. Yet people assume that everyone other than them is doing so all the time.
“Wise people have navigational skill, not a long list of rules.” That could be a book. Tell us more….
I really appreciated your sharing on no. 2 as a data point that things can still work out despite uncertainties. For whatever reasons, I don't have much data on how people generally do in relationships over time, and I haven't sought it out much myself.
This really resonated with me, especially the idea that the stories we tell ourselves can keep us moving while quietly keeping us from being fully alive — surviving pain doesn’t always make us stronger, sometimes it just makes us guarded, and learning the difference takes time and honesty. I’ve been writing recently about love from that same place, where love isn’t about becoming impenetrable but about staying open without losing yourself, and how the tension between wisdom and vulnerability shapes who we become. If that theme connects with you, I wrote more about it here: https://theeternalnowmm.substack.com/p/eternal-love?r=71z4jh
I also read that Generalist article and that quote was the one I took away. I struggled to apply it to my relationship and have wondered if I was in the right relationship. I love the reframe does person help me get closer to becoming the person I want to be? Thanks for sharing.
Oh yay so excited about you narrating your audiobook with excellence! Looking forward to listening.