Avoid Intense Ideologies. Have an Open Mind. Use the Rule of Rethinking.
Learning to not block, judge, reject and automatically categorize ideas and beliefs, allows for openness that may lead you to some of the best opportunities of your life.
“You can’t control what happens in life - just how you respond to what happens. The only thing permanent in life is change. And change is guaranteed. We have to embrace the ebbs and flows, by responding with adaptability. That’s one of the virtues that helps us get in front of anxiety, because anxiety is all about control and the fear of losing control.”
We have found ourselves aggressively stifled. We’ve been forced into metric assessments at school, standard flow patterns at work, and regularized sets at hospitals, gyms, and social-media hangouts. In the process, we’ve lost large chunks of the independence, creativity, and daring that our biology evolved to keep us resilient, making us more anxious, angry, and burned out. - From the wired article “Optimizing Machines Is Perilous. Consider ‘Creatively Adequate’ AI.”
Avoid intense ideologies. Always consider the other side as carefully as your own.
https://fs.blog/munger-operating-system/
In 2007, Charlie Munger gave the commencement address at USC Law School, opening his speech by saying, “Well, no doubt many of you are wondering why the speaker is so old. Well, the answer is obvious: He hasn’t died yet.”
Fortunately for us, Munger has kept on ticking. The commencement speech is an excellent response to the Big Question: How do we live a life that really works? It has so many of Munger’s core ideas that we think the speech represents the Munger Operating System for life.
Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology, because it cabbages up one’s mind. You’ve seen that. You see a lot of it on TV, you know preachers for instance, they’ve all got different ideas about theology and a lot of them have minds that are made of cabbage.
But that can happen with political ideology. And if you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out. What you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very careful with this ideology. It’s a big danger.
In my mind, I have a little example I use whenever I think about ideology, and it’s these Scandinavian canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools in the Grand Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology.
I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think that only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.” Now you can say that’s too much of an iron discipline..it’s not too much of an iron discipline. It’s not even that hard to do.
Changing your point of view has incredible benefits
This is a scientific paper. Intense, but very informative.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5095639/
The Impact of Perspective Change As a Cognitive Reappraisal Strategy on Affect: A Systematic Review
Don’t get boxed in into believing in one thing too much
It is not emacs vs vim. It is vim in emacs.
It is not physical books vs ebooks. It is physical books and ebooks.
It is not human developers vs AI. It is human developers and AI.
It is not Specialization vs Generalization. It is Specialization and Generalization.
Look at the stories for these movies
- Romper Stomper: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105275/
- Imperium: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4781612/
Tags
- Dunning-Kruger effect
- Burn Your Ships
- Having an open mind is a trait, but it’s also a skill you can cultivate
- How To Shift Perspective When You Feel Like Giving Up On What Matters Most
- Specialization vs Generalization
- Status Quo Bias and Disrupting the Status Quo
- How Emotionally Intelligent People Use the Rule of Rethinking
- Have it your way: rethinking the Rules You’re Upholding